Leadership: GIR Members

University of Maryland School of Medicine

James E. McNamee, PhD, is chief information officer and associate dean for information services at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. He has held this position since April 2001. His responsibilities include developing the School's information technology strategy and leading the Office of Information Services. The Office of 25 with an annual budget of $3 million develops and maintains a suite of information systems. It also provides a full array of technical support services.

He earned a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from Rutgers University. He received his master's and doctoral degrees in biomedical engineering from the University of Southern California. McNamee joined the University of South Carolina School of Medicine as a physiologist. Later, he established and led that school's information resources group. He maintains his commitment to academics by lecturing on respiratory physiology and leading small group discussions with Maryland's medical students.

He has been a member of GIR since its inception. He served on two GIR program committees, has been a Steering Committee member, and is now the GIR Chair. Most recently, he co-organized and co-taught the GIR's Leadership Institute.

Charles W. Henck is Chief Information Officer for University Physicians, Inc. (UPI), an academic group practice, which supports the faculty practices of the University of Maryland School of Medicine. As Chief Information Officer at UPI, he is responsible for the practice management, administrative, network and financial systems that support the faculty and administrative offices of the organization serving 960 doctors, 900 employees, and 1.3 million patients. He has worked for UPI since 1990 in a number of IT management roles, as organizational needs have expanded and evolved over the years. His responsibilities include the strategic planning, development, and implementation of information technology and services in support of practice plan goals. UPI's IT organization consists of four core Information Technology divisions, 32 staff members with an annual operating budget of $5.2 million. Functional areas managed include application and database development and maintenance, desktop services, data center operations, help desk, network, and security services.

Charles has been involved in information systems management, healthcare software development and networking technologies for more than 20 years. He started his IT career as a service engineer with National Data Corporation. He has recently participated as a member of the MD/DC Collaborative (State of MD RHIO initiative), WEDI SNIP Security and Privacy Sub-Group and on the Maryland Healthcare Cost Commission EDI Workgroup responsible for the promotion and adoption of EDI by providers throughout the state. He is now actively involved in the planning, design, and rollout of a joint clinical information system initiative, which will facilitate the clinical information exchange between the University of Maryland School of Medicine, UPI, and the University of Maryland Medical System, and become the enterprise electronic medical record.

He is a graduate of the inaugural AAMC GIR leadership institute and found it to be an outstanding professional development experience. He looks forward to contributing time and knowledge to the continued development of the AAMC GIR leadership program.

Sharon Bowser has 24 years of professional experience in information technology at the University of Maryland. Her background is diverse and touches nearly every aspect of the field. She spent ten years building personal computers, providing help desk support, and developing and delivering technology classes for faculty and staff. During the next decade she transitioned to applications development. Sharon has experience as an application analyst, database administrator, and director of Management Information Systems for the Information Services division of the School of Medicine. She has been the Assistant Dean for Information Services in the School of Medicine since 2002. Her current responsibilities are heavily focused on applications development and systems integration. She has a bachelor's in information systems management and a master's in business administration, both from the University of Maryland, University College.

University of Maryland School of Medicine Member Profile >>

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