All courses in the M.S. in Health Care Informatics degree program are taught by either the University of San Diego’s acclaimed practitioner professors or expert practitioners currently working in the health care informatics field. Their expertise, experience and insight about this emerging industry provides students with relevant information and expectations about the health care informatics field.
Dr. Jonathan Mack has over 37 years of health care experience as a registered nurse and nurse practitioner. Dr. Mack has held senior-level hospital positions as Director of Emergency and Trauma Services, Director of Critical Care Services, Director of Research and Development, Administrative Director for Inpatient Services, and executive positions as a Chief Nursing Officer and Chief Operating Officer for several Southern California hospitals. Dr. Mack’s clinical and leadership experience crosses health care delivery services, information and technology systems, advanced practice, and academic education services. Dr. Mack maintains an active practice as an Emergency Nurse Practitioner with a local medical group and provides consultative services in Telehealth, Telemedicine, and remote patient monitoring.
Dr. Mack earned his R.N. Diploma in 1983 from Los Angeles County Medical Center, School of Nursing and an A.A. degree from Los Angeles City College. Dr. Mack completed his Master of Science in Nursing degree in 1994, with a certificate as a Nurse Practitioner from Simmons College in Boston, MA. Dr. Mack continued his graduate education and completed his Ph.D. in Nursing at the University of San Diego Hahn School of Nursing and Health Science. Dr. Mack is board certified in Nursing Informatics from the American Nurses Credentialing Center and holds an NP designation from the California Board of Registered Nursing.
Dr. Mack completed a post-doctoral engineering fellowship with the West Wireless Health Institute (now referred to as the West Health Institute). His post-doctoral research focused on wireless medical device development, user interface design, and clinical interoperability. During his fellowship, Dr. Mack participated in the development of multiple smartphone-based clinical devices and software systems including a smartphone-based device capable of conducting remote wireless fetal monitoring and non-stress testing of high-risk pregnancies. After completing his engineering fellowship, Dr. Mack was promoted to Director of Research and Development for the West Health Institute where he led several initiatives developing smartphone-based remote clinical monitoring systems and systems designed to expand access to health care while reducing the cost of care.
Dr. Mack joined the faculty of the Hahn School of Nursing and Health Science in 2008. He has taught across pre-licensure Master’s Degree and Nurse Practitioner nursing programs. In 2010, Dr. Mack developed and implemented the Master of Science in Health Care Informatics and Master of Science in Nursing Informatics degree tracks. In 2011, Dr. Mack implemented the online Master of Science in Health Care Informatics degree track. Dr. Mack was promoted and added the title of Director of Innovative Learning, where he led the implementation of an innovative degree option allowing students to accelerate their academic experience to earn both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree with the goal of reducing educational expenses for the student while providing graduates with sought-after professional skills in informatics and technology. Dr. Mack developed and implemented a hybrid learning option for the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) degree providing registered nurses a path to a DNP in Nursing Informatics and Data Science or Health Systems Leadership.
Dr. Mack is currently the Director of the Nursing Informatics and Health Care Informatics Master’s degree programs. Dr. Mack also manages the post-MSN to DNP Hybrid programs. In addition, Dr. Mack is the Director of Innovative Learning Services for the Hahn School of Nursing and Health Science. This role is responsible for implementing and managing online learning modalities, classroom technology, and student support services. Dr. Mack’s program of research includes Telehealth and Telemedicine; Remote Patient Monitoring, and Simulation-Based Learning for Health Care and Nursing Informatics disciplines.
Learn More About the ProgramAs a board-certified family nurse practitioner with over 25 years of experience in healthcare, Dr. Rosales has served as a clinician, clinic manager, entrepreneur, business consultant and business owner. He co-founded a Southern California aesthetic practice now rated as one of the Nation’s 50 largest accounts. In addition, Dr. Rosales has initiated multiple start-up healthcare ventures including rural telemedicine emergency departments, and stand-alone urgent cares.
A retired Naval officer with over 21 years active service, Dr. Rosales received his education through military advancement programs such as Broadened Opportunity for Officer Selection and Training (BOOST), NROTC and Duty Under Instruction (DUINS). A retired Naval officer with a primary clinical focus in emergency care and aesthetics, Dr. Rosales has served in various leadership roles within inpatient, outpatient, telemedicine, rural, and military settings.
He holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Oklahoma and 2 graduate degrees from the University of Texas. In 2017, he received his Doctorate from the University of San Diego, where upon graduation, he obtained an adjunct faculty position and continues to teach in both the nurse practitioner and health care informatics program.
Learn More About the ProgramDr. Regina Atim is an associate professor of clinical informatics at University of San Diego, and Human Factors pharmacist at BD. She is also the Chair of Academic Alliance for the HIMSS So-Cal chapter, and the owner of Clinicians Touch Healthcare Solutions, which provides EHR and regulatory compliance support to clients. She is a Certified Trainer for the HIMSS CPHIMS/CAPHIMS review course.
Dr. Atim has extensive experience in a variety of healthcare settings including medical device development, community health center management, EHR implementation, regulatory compliance, and quality management. She has worked with organizations such as FDA, Pfizer, Johns Hopkins Hospital, University of Maryland Medical Center, Cerner, and The Delmarva Foundation, and more.
Dr. Atim earned her Doctor of Pharmacy from University of the Sciences, Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science. She obtained her Master of Business Administration from Northeastern University, and her Board Certification in Medical Affairs from ACMA. Dr. Atim began her informatics career at Cerner as a Consultant Pharmacy Strategist for EMR implementations. She has also worked at FDA as a Regulatory Project Manager, Pfizer as a Device Development Manager (IV/EHR integration), Johns Hopkins Hospital as a Clinical Pharmacist, and University of Maryland Medical Center in Program Management for the EPIC EMR implementation, as well as at The Delmarva Foundation – as a consultant developer of the Smart Medicine Toolkit for community health centers.
Learn More About the ProgramDr. Berkovich is Faculty Lead for the Health Care Analytics (HCA) Track of the Master’s program in Health Care Informatics. She has lectured nationally on population health methods, registries, and medical terminologies. Her multi-year collaboration with Amy Sitapati, MD, Chief Medical Information Officer, UC San Diego, resulted in a book, Applied Population Health: Driving Value-based Care with Actionable Registries. Dr. Berkovich enjoys online course development and teaching and is the CEO of Applied Population Health, a company she founded in 2019.
Her professional background is focused on the use of the Electronic Medical Record to guide clinical workflows. As a founding member of the UCSD population health team, she developed a variety of tools to drive clinical quality performance. There, she managed a population health team supporting multiple hospitals and community affiliate providers and oversaw 90+ registries to track active patients, payer groups, affiliate members, medications, wellness, and chronic diseases. Her local work with the Get to Green quality campaign helped claim nearly $5 million of at-risk incentive payments.
Dr. Berkovich’s Ph.D. research at the University of Texas compared the performance of ICD-9-CM, ICD-10-CM, and SNOMED CT clinical terminologies for the automated selection of disease cohorts.
Her PhD research focused on the automated selection of disease cohorts for the delivery of evidence-based care. In addition to a PhD in biomedical informatics from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, she holds a Master of Education degree from San Diego State University and a Bachelor of Science in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Southern California.
Learn More About the ProgramBefore joining the faculty at University of San Diego, Brenda Boone was an Advanced Practice Nurse for Imaging Services at Scripps Health in San Diego. Her mission and passion is to develop and instill best practices in her clinical environment. Her program of research has included nurse/physician collaboration and the clinical practice environment in interventional radiology and cardiovascular services. She has published her research and presented widely and nationally on these topics.
Brenda received her PhD at the University of San Diego, Hahn School of Nursing and Health Science in 2012. She has been a Registered Nurse for more than 32 years in acute care within a variety of practice settings, including oncology, emergency medicine and imaging services. Among her many projects is the content build for an EMR conversion to EPIC for her health system.
Learn More About the ProgramLiz Brown is a lecturer for Healthcare Finance in the Hahn School of Nursing and Health Science. She completed her MBA with a concentration in Marketing from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University in Atlanta, GA, and also received a Bachelor of Arts degree in French from Emory.
An experienced marketer, Ms. Brown has over 20 years of experience as a business leader, 16 of which were spent at IBM in IT marketing, where Ms. Brown led healthcare and life sciences marketing for a worldwide and North America perspective for 10 years. Ms. Brown is currently an Account Based Marketing Director at Teradata, supporting healthcare and banking account teams.
Learn More About the ProgramRobert Brown is a healthcare executive with over 23 years of clinical and progressive management experience in for-profit and not-for-profit hospital systems. Brown has particular expertise in financial and organizational turnaround, hospital operations, quality of care improvement, and revenue cycle enhancement. Since obtaining his ADN in 1995, Brown has worked for Tenet Healthcare, Memorial Hospital of Gardena, and Silver Lake Medical Center. His nursing experience includes Emergency Trauma, Post Anesthesia Care, Surgery, Open Heart, Perinatal, and Pediatrics. Additionally, Brown served as Chief Nurse Executive at two major community hospitals where he successfully obtained over $500,000 in grants from the California Employee Training Panel to provide training for current and new graduate nurses.
Robert Brown is currently Chief Operating Officer at Parkview Community Hospital Medical Center. Brown oversees operations of all ancillary clinical departments, OSHPD construction projects, and capital improvement projects. This includes completion of a $30 million state-of-the-art Emergency Department.
Brown is active in the community and serves as a board member of the Riverside Chambers of Commerce Arlington Business Council and Governmental Affairs Council. Brown earned his BSN, and MBA from University of Phoenix.
Learn More About the ProgramCarlo Candalla is currently the Chief Financial Officer of affiliated nonprofit and for-profit healthcare organizations based in Philadelphia, PA. He obtained his master’s degrees in business administration and in economics, and a post-baccalaureate certificate in advanced accounting. He enjoys traveling and experiencing different cultures, learning foreign languages, reading, and photography
Ellen Fleischman is a PhD-prepared Registered Nurse with a Master of Business Administration degree and an extensive background in health care administration. She is a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt and is currently working toward Lean Six Sigma Black Belt certification.
Dr. Fleischman worked at Sharp Mary Birch Hospital for Women & Newborns as the Director of Maternal-Infant Services & Support, where she led hospital-wide quality improvement projects and oversaw daily operations for ten departments and more than 250 staff members. In all, her nursing career spans more than 15 years and includes clinical nursing as well as leadership roles. She also helped to implement new electronic record systems and lead process changes utilizing technology.
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Tennille Gifford is a clinical informaticist with a mission to cultivate an environment of authenticity and transformation in health care through electronic modalities. Recent projects include: leading the open medical record program for Planetree re-designation with distinction, the implementation of Cerner Millennium at 5 Acute Care Hospitals, completion of a new content build for rehab/LTC/TCU, attestation for MU state 2, RCA/FMEA for highly reliable strategies/initiatives, and implementation of change management procedures for objective scoring. She has applied Six Sigma/Lean standards to multiple projects and is HIMSS Level 6 Certified: Leading CDS optimizations and rollouts.
With over ten years of leadership experience in nursing, Tennille has participated in several related committees and initiatives including: Chair of Acute and Critical Care System Committee, Clinical Informatics Council, Regional Resource Allocation and Informatics for PHS (Oregon State) and Regulatory and Quality System Committees for ongoing readiness assessments and surveys.
Tennille is a doctoral student in Nursing Informatics and Data Science at the USD Hahn School of Nursing and Health Science.
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