The evolution of medical informatics and the importance of collecting, understanding and acting upon data means a clinical informatics leader should be a part of any hospital or health system’s C-suite, according to a panel of experts at HIMSS 2017 in Orlando.

Howard Landa, MD, CMIO at Alameda Health System, said the role of informatics professionals has grown beyond “nerds” with a special interest in computers or a support line for clinicians struggling with technology. Though he admitted the field hasn’t reached its full potential—blame for which he put partially on health IT vendors—the art of juggling analytics and medicine, along with the knowledge of a physician’s workflow and clinical experience, presents an opportunity for informatics leaders.

“As we move forward between meaningful use, value-based care and all the things that we’re working on to improve the way care is delivered, there’s a lot of opportunities to get better than we are,” Landa said, specifically mentioning physician burnout and a lack of patient engagement.

To take advantage of those opportunities, the panel argued, someone schooled in clinical informatics should be in the C-suite. That promotion could help on a number of issues: the transition to value-based care, seeing real benefits from cost and quality metrics and investment in electronic health records, as well as managing “unwarranted” variation in clinical practice.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the informatics leader needs a seat at the “big board table.” Luke Webster, MD, chief medical officer at JVION, said in a prior role, he reported to the chief clinical officer, who in turn reported to the CEO, and that arrangement allowed an informatics perspective to seep into the C-suite.

“All of the things that need to change in our current way of delivering health and healthcare need to have informatics to do that successfully,” Webster said.

So what kind of informatics leader is best suited for the C-suite? Landa said the difference between variety of titles—like CMIO, chief health information officer (CHIO) or chief clinical informatics officer (CCIO)—is a bit murky. To Webster, the leader at the C-suite level should be a physician to merge informatics with clinical experience.

Richard Gibson, MD, executive director of the Health Record Banking Alliance and a former CMIO at Providence Health System in Portland, Oregon, said there are opportunities where non-MDs can break into and support the C-suite. If passionate informatics professionals can bring expertise in population health and the socioeconomic factors that affect health more than clinical practice, they’ll be an asset to health systems as the transition to value continues.

When it comes down to questioning clinical decisions and how they affect costs in the value-based care world, however, Gibson said a clinical background will help, especially at the top levels of management.

“There’s a level of judgment and finesse about how to present data without inflaming your colleagues,” Gibson said.