John Glaser, whose health IT career spans more than 30 years, will head population health and global strategy for Cerner starting April 1.

The company announced Glaser's appointment just before the 2016 Annual HIMSS Conference and Exhibition, which took place in Las Vegas this past week. There, Glaser signed copies of his new book, "Glaser on Health Care IT: Perspectives from the Decade that Defined Health Care Information Technology."

[Also: See our big gallery of HIMSS16 photos]

Glaser, senior vice president and member of the executive cabinet for Cerner, will assume the new title of senior vice president of population health and global strategy at the company – a fitting position, it seems, for a man who views healthcare IT as inextricably connected to patient care.

Before joining Cerner, Glaser was the longtime vice president and chief information officer at Partners HealthCare. He had been with the Boston healthcare system for 22 years.

Glaser then made the move from the provider side to the vendor side in 2010, when he took the helm of Siemens' global healthcare IT business, which includes 4,500 employees, multiple health information system brands, a global services arm and Siemens Information Systems Center.

[Also: Glaser reflects on decade of health IT]

In February 2015, Cerner acquired Siemens for $1.3 billion. That's when Glaser joined Cerner as a senior vice president and member of the company's executive cabinet.

"What hooked me early on was that it all came back to patient care," Glaser writes in his book – a compilation of columns he has written over many years. "There are few things more fundamental to being a human being than taking care of those who are sick, disabled or dying."

Among his many affiliations Glaser was president of HIMSS. Also, he was the founding chairman of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, known as CHIME.

[Also: Glaser to advise ONC chief on HITECH]

He has served on the boards of the eHealth Initiative, the National Alliance for Health Information Technology and the American Medical Informatics Association. He also served as senior advisor to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT.

Glaser is on the faculty of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, the Medical University of South Carolina and the Harvard School of Public Health.

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This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.