A good question, Rafi. IMHO, a CIO at a hospital or other large, technology-intensive institution should have a very solid IT background. by preference, it is someone who has come up the ranks from development, systems administration, or network engineering, perhaps gotten an MBA, and gone into the management/financial side of the house. You can't be an expert at everything. However, you should be an expert at some aspect, preferably the one that has the greatest importance to the enterprise. (i.e. you want your CIO at a biotech company to be very database/storage heavy. you probably want your CIO at a bank to be very network or database knowledgable.) I suppose the most important thing is, hire someone who can tell when they are being deceived by vendors, contractors, or employees. That requires a good general knowledge of information technology concepts. This kind of person would also know that some aspects of IT like documentation, planning, and scalability are all constants, regardless of what type of project is being worked on. One of our greatest weaknesses in this field, is the belief, by those who do not work in it, that anyone can pick up a book and quickly get up to speed on technology. Sadly, that is not the case. So, yes, I'm saying that a physician probably should not be the CIO of a very large hospital. - Dan On Fri, 29 Nov 2002, Rafi Sadowsky wrote:
## On 2002-11-29 15:05 -0600 Daniel Golding typed:
DG> DG> DG> Yes, I read his bio. I'm sure he's quite the techie amongst his fellow DG> physicans, and I think thats a great thing. However, its more than just a DG> bad idea to put someone who isn't completely proficient in a job like this DG> - its bad for the patients. If you want to run a shoe company, and put a DG> shoe salesman with a couple linux boxes in charge of your network, more DG> power to you. However, if you run a huge hospital, at which, there are DG> numerous patient affecting IT systems, you really have an obligation to DG> hire a professional, rather than a talented amateur, with all due respect DG> to the good doctor.
Hi Daniel,
Are you suggesting that a CIO at a "huge hospital"(or any other enterprise) Needs to be an expert at LAN/WAN networking, Systems, DBA & Security Rather than a management expert that has a good grasp of the basic IT issues and understands the core business needs of the enterprise ?
-- Rafi