Features Region: Midwest

A technologist by profession and education, Moe Alkhafaji has a passion for technology and problem-solving. But he acknowledges that, in his younger days, his goal was to “start a company to build something cool and make money.” That inclination led him to design and develop an intelligent decision-support engine using contextual patient data—medCPU Advisor—that, when […]

The American Academy of Family Physicians, whose 135,000 members make up the first line of defense against most any health problem, has been a bedrock of advocacy for family medicine for seven-plus decades, “A family doctor is well-positioned to be the one who first diagnoses a patient’s illness or injury,” Michael Smith tells Toggle in […]

And you thought you had a busy summer. Every summer for the last four years, Tim Klan has led the technology component, as Livonia Public Schools has undertaken not one school building renovation project, but five to six buildings for a total of 23 so far. From a tech perspective, that’s meant installing new everything—servers, […]

What does it mean to be a patient-centric hospital? For Pam Banchy, registered nurse and chief information officer at Western Reserve Hospital in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, it means combining her skills and experience on the clinical side with her expertise in deploying technology to better serve patients. Since Banchy first spoke with Toggle in January […]

While our college experiences are in many ways defined by buildings themselves—the gothic brick and modernist concrete, the teeming dorms and chock-full lecture halls—the technological infrastructures can be equally evocative. Without reliable internet, those memories can be colored quite differently. And not in sunny hues, either. Looking at the modern, arched opening of Ozarks Technical […]

“Don’t follow the sheep,” Garth Nel advises when asked what he’d tell young people pursuing a technical career. “Make sure you’re visible, drive change and engage with the business.” With info-tech being such an essential and evolving industry, Nel warns it’s no place for its practitioners to stand still. Nel sure hasn’t stayed stationary, beginning […]

No offense to the Cornhusker State, but Nebraska isn’t known for its innovation. As Derek Sailors quips of its remote and rural quality, “our email still comes in via pony express.” Or consider the fact that the state recently adopted the self-deprecating tourism slogan, “Honestly, it’s not for everyone!” But Community Hospital in McCook is […]

William Tran wants to be known as a transformational leader, and in his book that calls for collaborating with and challenging his team and extending due credit when it carries out a mission. Thus, he’ll take a modest bow for the way he’s been modernizing info-tech at Berkley Risk since coming aboard as CIO in […]

On a Wednesday morning in mid-September, a car carrying four high-school students pulls into the parking lot of a mall in Chesterfield, Missouri. Within a few minutes, three more cars arrive. There are 10 students in total, mostly juniors and seniors, all eager for the day ahead. Once inside the mall, they thread through the […]

There was no need for Doug Duncan to be a disruptor when he stepped into the role of CIO at Columbia Insurance Group in August 2017. The midsized commercial property and casualty insurer in Columbia, Missouri, was already a stable operation bolstered by a capable info-tech department of nearly 50. So the midcareer technologist’s responsibilities […]