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Susan Heichert, RN, MA, FHIMSS began her career in pediatric nursing, practicing primarily in newborn intensive care and pediatric oncology. Her early involvement in nursing informatics activities in the 1980s provided opportunities to assist the hospital with a beta implementation of McKesson's (then HBOC) STAR system.

Relocation to Iowa allowed her to experience the vendor world, as she participated in a startup company and played every role from design to development, pitching to potential investors, marketing, training, installation, implementation and technical support.

After a stint experimenting with a new technology-enabled opportunity called "working remotely", Heichert returned to the provider space. She was involved in both best of breed and single vendor selections, as well as implementations for providers and early work on enterprise data warehouse and health information exchange (HIE).

After relocating to Shanghai, China, Heichert joined Allina Health, where she was part of the team that implemented a single EHR—including both clinical and revenue cycle components across an entire health system. Allina was honored to earn the HIMSS Davies Award for that initiative in 2007. In 2008, Heichert had the opportunity to speak at the HIMSS World of Health IT conference in Copenhagen.

In 2008, Heichert had assumed the CIO role at Allina and now works with teams on additional initiatives allowing Allina make continued progress towards achieving the triple aim for patients and populations—including predictive analytics and the implementation of a private HIE.

In 2010, Heichert worked briefly for a health IT consulting company before returning to her CIO role at Allina—commuting from Singapore for a year and then relocating back to Minnesota. She has been chosen to serve in interim leadership roles at Allina in addition to the CIO role, including vice president, care management. Most recently she served as senior vice president of human resources and chief human resources officer, where she worked with the team to create a human resources strategic plan, in addition to several other major initiatives.