Todd Rowland, M.D.
Todd serves as the Executive Director of HealthLINC, a mature health information exchange (HIE) serving South Central Indiana, a highly rural area surrounding Bloomington, Indiana, which is the home of Indiana University and part of the regional life sciences corridor. Despite almost no physician EHR adoption in 2004, HealthLINC has been instrumental in bringing the adoption levels to 90%. HealthLINC sends 2.4 million clinical results per year.
HealthLINC made the decision in 2006 to outsource its IT infrastructure to HealthBridge, one of the largest and most successful HIEs in the country serving the Tri-state region around Cincinnati. At the same time HealthLINC has maintained local governance, outreach, and physician practice training and support. This has proved to be a successful model, and in 2008, HealthLINC and HealthBridge received an Innovations Award from eHealth Initiative for developing a financial sustainability HIE model for small HIEs. HealthLINC has been an active participant in NHIN 2.
Currently, HealthLINC is actively launching the Tri-state Regional Extension Center in South Central Indiana to address physician adoption and Meaningful Use. It is facilitating HIE related quality initiatives at the health care system, community, and cross-regional levels including patient centered medical home pilots and accountable care organizations. Dr. Rowland currently serves as the network director for 3 active HIT/HIE grant projects with HRSA and HHS.
Todd brings this same level of expertise to physicians, health systems, other providers, payers, public health, researchers, and vendors in the healthcare community. With over 15 years of experience as a practicing physician, Dr. Rowland has a practical understanding of healthcare, which he combines with his knowledge of and enthusiasm for electronic solutions and health information exchange to healthcare problems. Dr. Rowland’s success is also founded on his experience in IT enterprise planning, health care community planning, physician-hospital strategy development, health information technology grant writing, and electronic health record implementation.
Dr. Rowland has been recognized nationally for his leadership in HIE, most recently being honored by the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems (AMDIS) in 2010. He completed a Doctoral Fellowship in Medical Informatics at Harvard/MIT, Division of Health Sciences and Technology. He is currently an adjunct professor in the School of Library and Information Sciences at Indiana University and Director of Medical Informatics at Indiana University Health Bloomington in Bloomington, Indiana. He has been a member of the Functionality Working Group of the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology and of the HIMSS RHIO Federation. He has served as the Indiana Chapter Liaison to the Healthcare Information and Management System Society (HIMSS) RHIO Federation.
Kathy Church, BSN, PMP
Kathy is the Ambulatory Project Manager for Bloomington Hospital. Her role at Bloomington Hospital involves development and implementation of health information technology and exchange to improve patient care and safety. She focuses on the greater medical community, workflow, and technology to assist with healthcare reform, partnering with Dr. Todd Rowland. Her leadership role with HealthLINC as Clinical Operations continues to evolve with the ongoing development of this community HIE.
Kathy has a wide array of experience including the implementation of an EHR; her extensive nursing background including inpatient from intensive care to OB and outpatient from emergency department to academic residency aids her function in the role as the Ambulatory Project Lead. Kathy received a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Evansville and her Project Management Certification from PMI.
Kathy has previously worked at Michigan State University Kalamazoo Center for Medical Studies in Michigan as Manager of Nursing Services, and Promptcare Physicians Clinic in Bloomington, Indiana as the Quality Assurance Director and Staff Educator, and Bedford Regional Medical Center, in Bedford, Indiana as the supervisor of Emergency Services.
Candice Crandall
Candice Crandall is the Executive Assistant for HealthLINC. She is responsible for providing full administrative support to the Executive Director and team, maintenance of the HealthLINC website; development of local marketing and outreach materials, including skill enhancement Webinars, an annual Building a Community Health Information Exchange Conference; and management of multiple grants and budgets and document reporting.
Candice possesses an extensive background in administrative office support of senior level executives. Prior to working with HealthLINC, Candice spent 19-years as an administrative assistant at a prominent non-profit international education organization.
Sharon Edwards
Sharon Edwards serves as an instructor for Clinical Messaging. Her primary responsibility is to contact local medical practices and explain the benefits of using Clinical Messaging and offer demonstrations and training on its use. She has a long history with the Bloomington medical community, including almost nine years with Bloomington Hospital. She also spent time working with a large group of local physicians. She joined HealthLINC in 2008.
J. Michael Sullivan, M.D., FACMPE
Michael Sullivan graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a degree in biophysics and then served as a teacher in the Peace Corps in Borneo for two years. Upon returning from Asia, he graduated from medical school at the University of Kansas and did additional training in internal medicine at the University of Hawaii. Dr. Sullivan practiced emergency medicine, and in 1984 he co-founded the PromptCare Clinics in Bloomington, Indiana. He later served as PromptCare’s CEO and directed its growth into a 10-physician group with two clinics. He was elected a Fellow in the American College of Medical Practice Executives in 1997. Dr. Sullivan founded Xylor Corporation in 1984 to develop and support a practice management system for urgent care clinics. He functioned as chief architect of the system, directing its development, installation, and support in twenty clinics nationwide. He has led the development of several technologies, including a medication management system, a fee schedule manager, and a protocol proxy to accelerate the secure transport of medical image data. He currently serves as a consultant and technical advisor for the healthLINC Health Information Exchange and the Indiana University Health Center. Most recently, Dr. Sullivan became a member of the Technical and Security Workgroup of the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) Trial Implementation contracted by the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) in HHS.
