School of Medicine
Information Technology Strategic Review Task Force (ITTF)

Overview
The IT Strategic Review Task Force (ITTF) was convened in October, 2008 by Dean Steven T. DeKosky. The ITTF charge is: to outline a Strategic Plan for IT, including prioritized list of future needs, linked with budgets. The task force will work from the period of October, 2008 through May, 2009 to gather information and develop a report with recommendation presented to Dean DeKosky at the conclusion. These recommendations will assist SOM leadership as they develop the IT Strategic Plan for the School of Medicine as well as an IT Governance Structure. Both the strategic plan and governance structures will adopt architectural and security standards, and will achieve economies of scale by using shared applications and standards for interoperability of data wherever possible. The appointed Co-Chairs of the ITTF are Brad Haws, Senior Associate Dean and Chief Operating Office of the School of Medicine and Marshall Ruffin, MD, Chief Technology Officer of the UVa Health System.

Benefits
A School of Medicine Strategic Plan for IT will serve to ensure compliance with all national standards for top medical schools, to create a framework for evaluation and prioritization of IT funding requests, to improve administrative systems where needed by capitalizing on economies of scale and interoperability of systems, and to reduce redundancies of time or effort.

Membership
Twenty-two task force members serve on the primary ITTF Strategic Review team. These members represent clinical and basic science administrators and IT experts as well as leaders from administrative and IT areas of the SOM, Medical Center, HSF, and ITC. There are an additional five subteams of the task force: Education, Patient Care, Research, Administration, and Enterprise Architecture. Each subteam has additional members who are knowledgeable about the domain. A full list of all ITTF members and subteam members, is available here:

The ITTF is also working closely with the AAMC Group on Information Resources (GIR) to collect national data regarding benchmarks and best practice for developing IT Strategic Plans in academic medical schools. Staff support for the ITTF is provided by Juliet Trail, Dean's Office Special Assistant and Wendi Clure, Director of the Medical Center Program Management Office.

Process
The ITTF is presently finalizing the SOM IT Survey, the largest survey or inventory of IT technologies, personnel, systems, and programs used across the school that has been administered to date. The survey data will provide information on a department, center, and administrative unit level about present IT uses and needs, and will allow each area to present vision, future projects, and future needs information. The survey will be completed by early April, and the data will be incorporated into the assessment and recommendation report of the ITTF. The ITTF will work in April and May, 2009 to incorporate results, conduct further focus group interviews for additional data, and prepare a report and presentation of recommendations.

Share Your Feedback
Input from any member of our School of Medicine and Health System community is welcomed regarding the ITTF. Please send your comments via email, with the subject line "ITTF Feedback" to this email address: SOM-IT-taskforce@virginia.edu.