An open letter of thanks to departing HISO members Becky George and Karen Blake, who have resigned from the committee to move onto new things.
Karen, you joined us three years ago in 2018, nominated by Shayne Tong and the DHB CIO leaders group in your clinical informatics leadership role with Northern Region DHBs. You were fully involved from the first meeting and there was a feeling HISO had had an upgrade and jumped up a version or two. You brought a new perspective and energy. You had expert and constructive input to every topic, and your way was always to move forward. This helped to get quality and freshness into the many specifications we’ve published over the time. It was to our enormous benefit that you also got involved in the identity and interoperability working groups, as well as having a key role in clinical informatics and data strategy. Nobody else could hope to do this much, so well. We’re tremendously indebted to you, Karen, and look forward to having you as a ‘trusted friend’ in the continuing data strategy project and your other endeavours.
Becky may recall the 2015 HiNZ conference in Christchurch, when HISO membership was first mooted. The rebuild was underway, the National EHR had just been announced, we were hosting SNOMED Expo the following year, and it was a positive time. Becky, you were Allied Health informatics lead at Canterbury DHB when you joined HISO in 2016, and HISO soon had an unprecedentedly productive partnership with the National Allied Health Informatics Group that you chaired. A model standard emerged as a result, that was given wide publicity thanks to your untiring efforts. You cultivated other relationships for us too, with DHBs, TAS and of course the clinical informatics community. We were all so proud when you were appointed HiNZ Chair, as well as when you ever-so-deservedly won the clinical informatics leadership award. It’s a credit to you that the national health information platform or Hira is now your project as clinical lead. And finally, thank you for the urgency and initiative you showed in drafting much of the first COVID-related standard we published last year.
Karen and Becky, we wish you both the best in your continuing professional and academic careers. You remain our trusted friends and advocates for data and digital standards and their adoption.
https://www.yammer.com/healthinformationstandards/messages/1113945903882240