Lynn Harold Vogel, Ph.D.

I've been an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Bioinformatics for the past six years. What began as an interest in teaching graduate students about information technology investment issues in healthcare has evolved into several more focused interests:

IT Valuation - How can we determine that our IT investments truly add value to healthcare processes? What can we learn from research outside of healthcare, (largely from Economics) on IT Valuation and its relationship to Productivity at both the macroeconomic and firm levels?

Cost Analysis - How do we determine and analyze the various types of costs that are associated with IT investments in healthcare?

Return on Investment Issues - How do we use the various ROI tools (Net Present Value, Break Even Analysis, etc.) to determine the "value of specific types of IT investment?

Healthcare Value Chain - How we use the concept of a "value chain" to describe work flow and work processes in healthcare, and to determine the specific points at which IT investment will in fact add "value" to the chain of events and tasks experienced by participants, including patients, physicians, anciallary personnel, managers, vendors, etc.

Implementing Technology in Support of Business Objectives – How do we implement information technology that is responsive to the business objectives of the organization?.  The challenge here is not only to understand what the various constitutencies in healthcare are trying to achieve, but to be sufficiently knowledgeable about technology itself to determine what will be most effective in assisting each of them to achieve their objectives.