One of Chicagos biggest health systems has a new chief information officer with a strong background in digital healthcare.

Rush University Medical Center, a 664-bed academic medical center, has hired Shafiq Rab, as its next CIO. Rab comes to Rush from Hackensack University Health Network, in Hackensack, New Jersey, where he also served as senior vice president and CIO.

Prior to Hackensack, Rab worked as vice president and CIO at Greater Hudson Valley Health System in New York, where he led the systems implementation of electronic medical records software, and as vice president and CIO at St. Marys Hospital in Passaic, New Jersey, and CIO and director of information technology/information security officer at Carrier Clinic at East Mountain Hospital in Belle Mead, New Jersey.

Rab comes to Rush with experience in digital and mobile healthcare. At Hackensack University Health, a 900-bed non-profit, research and teaching hospital located just west of New York, Rab is credited with rolling out various web tools and digital health programs including bedside iPads and the Apple Health Kit, to allow patients and families better access to their medical records and improved communication with doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers, the hospital says.

Apples Health app comes pre-loaded on iPhones. The Health app allows consumers to look at their data from multiple health apps in one place. Developers can integrate the HealthKit API into their apps, so data from their apps can feed information to the Apple Health app, with the users permission.

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At Hackensack University Health, Rab also was in charge of developing an Apple and Android app that gave patients access to direct appointment scheduling, test results, prescription information and communication with physicians from any device, developing facial recognition technology to accurately match and identify the appropriate patient to his or her data and implementing updated software allowing patients to connect providers to their medical record regardless of the system that doctor uses, Rush says.

Rush University has a diverse digital healthcare program in place. In November, Rush rolled out a new digital healthcare feature that enables patients to see all doctors notes through a secure web link that is a part of MyChart, a digital healthcare portal linked to an electronic medical records system from Epic Systems Corp.

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