George Cozaris new tech chief at Melbourne Health

George Cozaris is the new chief information officer at Melbourne Health in a newly created role.

A Melbourne Health spokesperson told CIO Australia that Cozaris will focus on ensuring the appropriate infrastructure, systems and expertise are in place to support the successful implementation of the Connecting Care electronic medical record (EMR) for Parkville Precinct.

The Victorian government in its May budget allocated $124 million to the Parkville EMR which will be rolled out at Melbourne Health (Royal Melbourne Hospital, North Western Mental Health and the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory), the Royal Women's Hospital and Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.

According to a recent report in Pulse+IT, these facilities missed out on the funding last year after a successful roll out at the Royal Children's Hospital in April 2016 and the bid was re-scoped.

"George's extensive experience in executive management, strategic leadership and oversight of major transformational change programs, including implementing an EMR at Austin Health, means he will play a critical role in the successful implementation of the Parkville EMR," the spokesperson said.

Cozaris is also chair of the Victorian health Chief Information Officers Committee and the Parkville Precinct Electronic Medical Record (EMR) Technology Committee.

He is continuing his role as the executive director, information management and technology at the Royal Women's Hospital, the spokesperson said. He has been in this role since October 2015. During this time, Cozaris created and led the implementation of the Women’s Clinical & Information Technology Strategy as well as a governance framework.

The Melbourne Health spokesperson said Cozaris will spend half his week working at Melbourne Health and the other half at The Royal Women's Hospital.

Cozaris previously spent 7 years as the chief information at Austin Health. He also held various roles at Alfred Health between 2000 and 2008 and was national IT manager at the CSIRO between 1998 and 2000.

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