Information Governance for Healthcare Professionals: A Practical Approach

Like other critical organizational assets, information is a strategic asset that requires high level of oversight in order to be able to effectively use it for organizational decision-making, performance improvement, cost management, and risk mitigation.

Adopting an information governance program shows a healthcare organization’s commitment to managing its information as a valued strategic asset. Information governance serves the dual purpose of optimizing the ability to extract clinical and business value from healthcare information while meeting compliance needs and mitigating risk. Healthcare organizations that have information governance programs will have a competitive edge over others and contributes to safety and quality of care, population health, operational efficiency and effectiveness, and cost reduction initiatives.

This is a much-needed book in the healthcare market space. It will explain, in clear terms, how to develop, launch, and oversee an Information Governance program. It also provides advice and insights from leading IG, cybersecurity and information privacy professionals in healthcare.

Robert F. Smallwood is the author of nine books in the past ten years. Smallwood is a technologist and an industry-leading author, keynote speaker, consultant, and educator. He is the author of Information Governance for Executives (CreateSpace, 2016), Introduction to Information Governance (CreateSpace, 2016), and the pioneering text Information Governance: Concepts, Strategies, and Best Practices (Wiley, 2014), which is being used to teach information governance (IG) to graduate students from the University of Oxford, to University of Michigan, University of British Columbia, San Jose State, and other major universities worldwide. He is also the author of Managing Electronic Records: Methods, Best Practices, and Technologies (Wiley, 2013); Safeguarding Critical E-Documents: Implementing a Program a Secure Confidential Information Assets (Wiley, 2012) and several other books. Mr. Smallwood was also the leading IG blogger in 2015/16 in the Information Governance profession, and has published more than 100 articles and given more than 50 conference presentations on content management and IG.

Smallwood is a founding partner of IMERGE Consulting and heads up the Institute for Information Governance. Since 2014, he has trained more professionals in IG than any instructor worldwide, and in 2016 created an Information Governance course for LinkedIn which is marketed to its 500 million+ business users in LinkedIn.

Mr. Smallwood has more than 25 years of experience in the information technology industry and holds an MBA from Loyola University of New Orleans. He has been recognized as one of the Top 10 Contributors to the IG Industry by the 2014-16 Information Governance Conference. In addition to teach IG courses to corporate clients, he has been a guest lecturer at San Jose State University and University of British Columbia, and he consults with Fortune 500 companies and governments to assist them in making technology decisions and implementations. Some of his past research, training and consulting clients include the Ochsner Medical center, Kaweah Delta Health Care Distrist, U.S. FDA, National Archives & Records Administration, Verizon, Bank for International Settlements, World Bank, Johnson & Johnson, Apple, AT&T, the Supreme Court of Canada, Xerox, and IBM. Smallwood was an AIIM International chapter founder and president, and a member of the executive committee of the Board of Directors, and is active in ARMA International.