ABSTRACT
The Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO) position is one of the newest executive positions in American healthcare. Although the term CMIO was not widely used until the late 1990s, and most institutions did not formally appoint anyone to such a post until early 2000, some physicians were performing this role in the 1970s and 1980s, and even in the 1960s. This chapter focuses on those individuals, some of whom are identified, and others who are more generally described, as they wish to remain anonymous. Decades later, the hospital has recognized that physician informatics expertise is valuable, and they have begun paying a medical staff member as CMIO. The history of the evolution of the CMIO in the United States is largely a matter of oral tradition. The most widely installed and successful electronic medical records (EMR) system in the United States, EPIC, is built on associative database architecture, as it the most long-lasting governmental system.
