It's hard for me to believe, but I’ve been at Penn Medicine for 13 years. There has been a remarkable amount of change, growth, and learning that has occurred both within my organization and in myself during this time.

Upon entering a new calendar decade, I thought I'd share a few reflections on past achievements, lessons learned – and thoughts to pave the way forward in setting new goals to keep trailblazing on the technology landscape.

I find that it’s important as a leader to express gratitude. Doing so creates a high achieving mentality at work and builds connectedness, perhaps even solidarity, which can pay dividends and even transform the organization toward increased productivity.

The Information Services achievements that I am most thankful for at my organization include these key items:

• First, I’m thankful that we successfully implemented our integrated electronic health record. This achievement significantly enabled the continuity of patient care and seamlessly unites our patients’ data in the ambulatory, inpatient and homecare settings.
• Second, I’m thankful for the high performing Information Services team that gives 100% each day - dedicated toward achieving our departmental mission aligned to support our enterprise goals. By building a strong team vision, culture, and establishing solidarity, we have achieved a 96% retention rate over the past seven years.  
• Next, I’m thankful for Penn Medicine’s leadership that participates in our information services governance, sets institutional priorities and provides our teams with the resources necessary to continue to be leaders in health care delivery. 
• I’m also thankful for our vendor partners whose employees develop some of the most functional and reliable technology and software solutions to assist our caregivers in their daily operations. 
• Lastly, I’m most thankful for all of my business partners in the healthcare IT industry that work collaboratively with me and members of the Information Services team to design, develop and implement solutions that meet the institution’s objective to deliver world class patient care, education and research. 

Through these contributions and collaborations, my organization has changed in ways we never dreamed of at the beginning of this past decade.

As we look forward to the next decade, I can only imagine the changes that will take place. I foresee significant advancements occurring in mobility, imaging, telemedicine, virtual reality, 5G/6G, artificial intelligence, data privacy and security, genomic sequencing and translational research.

From my perspective, these are just a few of the factors that will shape the next decade:

• In the near term, Penn Medicine’s Information Services team is focusing our efforts on driving more value out of the technology assets in which we have made investments.
• Further optimizing our electronic health record to be more intuitive and useful for our clinicians;
• Expanding efforts to further engage our patients in the management of their care;
• Delivering timely analytics to decision makers across the enterprise to improve on-the-ground decisions and drive desired behaviors;
• Integrating our research and patient care efforts to deliver personalized patient care solutions;
• Ensuring that we engage our most valuable assets, our employees, with the most up-to-date technologies to enhance their career opportunities. 

The next decade is sure to bring an accelerated rate of change to the healthcare industry. Like the metamorphosis that has taken place in other industries, healthcare technology will be the catalyst for provider organizations to succeed in the ever changing world of healthcare.