Virginia joined the Department of Biomedical Informatics in 2007. She shares teaching responsibilities for the Applied Clinical Informatics Course, lectures in the introductory course, and directs the Columbia HIT Certification in Professional Achievement Program. The certification program is a graduate-level work-friendly program teaching practical HIT knowledge and skills needed in the workforce. The program uses innovative teaching techniques including a blend of on-line and in-person learning, interdisciplinary team based learning, and a workshop classroom approach.
Virginia specializes in healthcare interoperability and HIT Standards and has been active in the HIT Standards community since 1994. She has taught nationally and internationally for HL7 since 2000, is the lead author of the HL7 RIM Certification Test, and is certified in HL7 CDA Release 2 and HL7 V2.3.1. She has served on numerous initiatives in HL7 with a consistently strong focus on education. She is also known for her generalist expertise within the HL7 community and has been instrumental in review and improvement of the standards from a breadth view as well as helping to review and improve HL7 organizational processes. She was an HL7 Volunteer of the Year in 2005 and named HL7 Fellow in 2010. She has also been active in federal HIT standards efforts including serving as co-chair of the ONC Health Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP) webinar workgroup. She has testified in Washington due to her HIT Standards development and implementation experience.
Virginia has worked in health information technology since 1990 with both vendor, consultant and provider experience. She has been part of the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital Information Services department since 1994 specializing in interoperability and HIT Standards. She has deep experience in implementation and support of large scale integration projects using HL7 and interface engines, as well as EMPI, HIE, and terminology mapping. More recently, she has become an HIT regulations expert and serves on the hospital’s core meaningful use team.
She has a BS and MS in Computer Science and is a HIMSS Certified Professional in Health Information Management Systems (CPHIMS).