Planning Committee Members
Marion J. Ball, EdD, FACMI, FAAN, FIAHSI, FMLA, FAHIMA, FLHIMSS, FCHIME, is a Raj and Indra Nooyi Endowed Distinguished Chair in Bio-engineering, as well as Presidential Distinguished Professor and Executive Director for the Multi-Interprofessional Center for Health Informatics at the University of Texas at Arlington.
Dr. Marion Ball is an international innovator, educator, author, and leader with over thirty-five years of experience in the healthcare IT community.
Dr. Ball is a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM), now named the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), and was elected to membership of the IBM Industry Academy. She is a founding board member of the Health on the Net (HON). She served on the National Library of Medicine’s Board of Regents for over ten years, on the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Board, as President of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA). Dr. Ball has twice served on the board of the College of Health Information Management Executives (CHIME) and twice on the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Board, where she served for four years each time. She served from 2003-2007 as a member of the AHIMA/FORE Board. From 2007-2009, she served on the Advisory Council for the Department of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Pittsburgh. She was Co-Chair of the former TIGER Board from 2006-2013. She also serves on the Editorial Boards of three leading healthcare informatics journals: Journal of Healthcare Information Management (JHIM), Healthcare Informatics and Health Informatics Journal. In 2017, she was elected to the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics (IAHSI).
She is well acquainted with the mission and promise of programs in the federal, academic, and private sectors, and has published some of the core texts in the field of health informatics. Two of her books published in 2004 are entitled Health Information Management Systems: Cases, Strategies, and Solutions (Third Edition) and Consumer Informatics: Applications and Strategies in Cyber Health Care. In addition, Consumer Informatics received the Book-of-the-Year Award at the HIMSS National Convention in Dallas, Texas in February 2005. In January 2006, her book was published, Introduction to Nursing Informatics, Third Edition. In 2007, she was a coeditor of Aspects of Electronic Health Record Systems in the series entitled Health Informatics, of which she is co-editor with Dr. Kathryn Hannah. The 4th Edition of Nursing Informatics: Where Technology and Caring Meet was published January 2011. There are now over 60 volumes in the series, and it is published by Springer-Verlag. Her previous editions of the nursing books have been translated into Portuguese and Chinese, Japanese, German, Korean, and Polish. In 2015, she published four books: the 4th Edition of the Introduction of Nursing Informatics, The History of Medical Informatics in the United States with Dr. Morrie Collen, the 4th Edition of Healthcare Information Management Systems with Charlotte Weaver, George Kim and Joan Kiel, Health Informatics for the Curious: Why Study Health Informatics (The Truth about the College Majors, Research Degree, Student Scholarships, and Career Success), Kindle Edition, with William Hersh.
Dr. Ball has received numerous academic, national and international awards for her contribution to the medical and information technology industry. She is the recipient of such coveted awards as the Distinguished Service Award from the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA). In 2002, she received the Morris F. Collen Lifetime Achievement Award from ACMI/AMIA. In 2003, she was made an honorary member of Sigma Theta Tau International. Additionally, in 2008, she was inducted as an Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing (AAN). In 2010, she received the Award of Excellence, an International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) Lifetime Achievement award. She was selected as one of the 50 most influential IT professionals by the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) over the last 50 years. This was documented in the HIMSS publication “HIMSS 50 in 50,” debuted at the HIMSS Annual 50th Anniversary Meeting in February 2011. In February 2014, she was given the Lifetime Membership Award by HIMSS for 30 years of service and major contributions to the field of health informatics. In 2017, she was recognized by HIMSS as one of The Most Influential Women in Health IT. Also in 2017, she received an award from Health Data Management, Most Powerful Women in Healthcare IT.
Dr. Ball is Professor Emerita at Johns Hopkins University in the School of Nursing and has a joint appointment in the Division of Health Sciences Informatics in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She is an affiliate faculty member of Information Systems at the University of Maryland Baltimore County as well as holding an appointment at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in the Department of Biomedical Informatics. In 2018 she joined the Johns Hopkins Academy for Retired Faculty.
As an educator and speaker, Dr. Ball has led workshops and lectured on various aspects of health informatics worldwide. She has dedicated much of her career to the field of Nursing Informatics and is a founding member of the TIGER (Technology Informatics Guiding Education Reform) Foundation initiative which addresses the importance of integrating the most current enabling technologies into the nursing profession from bedside practitioners to researchers. TIGER has moved into the inter-disciplinary and international environment, and formally became part of the HIMSS organization in 2014.
Currently Dr. Ball works both nationally and internationally on patient safety, nursing informatics, the electronic health record, and enabling technologies as it applies to clinical point of care initiatives.
Susan H. Fenton, PhD, RHIA, CPHI, FAMIA, FAHIMA, is an Associate Professor and the Associate Dean for Academic and Curricular Affairs at the University of Texas School of Biomedical Informatics in Houston, TX. She is responsible for their graduate certificates, master’s and doctoral degree programs. Dr. Fenton recently led the development of the nation’s first practice doctorate in health informatics (DHI). She is a 2019 recipient of the UT Regents’ Outstanding Teacher Award and the 2019 Texas Health Information Management Association Legacy Award.
Dr. Fenton is a member of the UT Shine Academy of Master Teachers and named a UT System Distinguished Teaching Professor. Dr. Fenton has received more than $10 million in grant funding and is currently the project director for the Gaining Equity in Training for Public Health Informatics and Technology award from the ONC. She also serves on a variety of regional and national professional association committees and boards. Dr. Fenton has more than 30 years experience in health informatics and health information management and holds a B.S. in health information management from UTMB in Galveston, an MBA from the University of Houston and a PhD in health services research from Texas A&M.
Christoph U. Lehmann, MD, FAAP, FACMI, FIAHSI, is the Associate Dean for Clinical Informatics, Willis C. Maddrey, MD Distinguished Professor in Clinical Sciences, and Director, Clinical Informatics Center, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
Dr. Lehmann is Professor for Pediatrics, Population and Data Sciences, and Bioinformatics at UT Southwestern where he directs the Clinical Informatics Center. He conceived and launched the journal Applied Medical Informatics, devoted to original research and commentary on the use of computer automation in the day-to-day practice of medicine and he served as the Editor-in-Chief since its inception. In 2009, he co-edited Pediatric Informatics, the first textbook on this subject.
Dr. Lehmann served on the board of the American Medical Informatics Association from 2008 to 2013 and served two terms as the organization’s secretary. In 2010, he was inducted as a fellow into the American College of Medical Informatics, in 2014 he was elected to the American Pediatric Society, and in 2012 he became a Vice President of the International Medical Informatics Association in charge of the IMIA Yearbook to serve as President from 2017-2019.
From 2010 to 2019, Dr. Lehmann was the inaugural Medical Director of the Child Health Informatics Center for the American Academy of Pediatrics, where he was involved in developing the Model Pediatric EHR Format and currently works on the CHILD Registry. Dr. Lehmann served on the federal Health IT Policy Committee and co-chaired the Health IT for the Care Continuum Task Force at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. He was the first chair of the Examination Committee of the American Board of Preventive Medicine, Subcommittee for Clinical Informatics until 2018. Dr. Lehmann’s research focuses on improving clinical information technology and clinical decision support. His most recent publications can be found here.
Dr. Gabriela Mustata Wilson, PhD, MSc, FHIMSS, SNAI, FIAHSI is an internationally recognized health informatics expert with a passion for harnessing the power of research and translating it into community action. She is a Professor and Founding Co-Director of the Multi-Interprofessional Center for Health Informatics at the University of Texas at Arlington in Texas, USA. With a background in chemical engineering, pharmacoinformatics, health informatics and public health informatics, Dr. Mustata Wilson bridges the knowledge-to-action gap related to integrating public and ecological health to foster resilience. For the past twenty years, she has educated and trained learners in various interprofessional settings conducted research in industry and academia, and led partnerships across industry, academic institutions, and the regional and international community. Dr. Mustata Wilson has demonstrated her active support to the Health Informatics community by serving in numerous leadership positions within the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) and the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA®). She is currently the co-chair of the HIMSS Technology Informatics Guiding Education Reform (TIGER) International Initiative, a global initiative fostering community development and workforce development using an interprofessional approach, and the chair-elect of the AMIA Parmacoinformatics Workgroup.
Dr. Mustata Wilson is a Fellow Member of HIMSS bestowed in recognition of service, professional participation, job experience, publications, and presentations and Fellow of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics (FIAHSI) in recognition of international leadership in biomedical and health informatics, promoting the dissemination of knowledge and best practices, fostering new ideas, and encouraging worldwide collaboration and sharing of expertise and resources. She is also a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), a distinction given to individuals who demonstrate a high degree of innovation through US patents that have brought a real impact on society’s welfare. Her most recent activities are focused on addressing racial injustice and health inequity by advancing a community partnership model of outreach to Latino populations that empowers communities through participatory discussion. As a result of her leadership and collaborative efforts, the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities (USU) named The University of Texas at Arlington as its inaugural Racial Justice and Equity Program Award Winner in 2021.