Mary Alice (Annecharico) Simpson, MS, RN retired in October 2017 as Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for the Henry Ford Health System, where she was responsible for the strategic planning and delivery and support of its integrated delivery systems including Project Helios revenue cycle, electronic health record, physician and patient portals, as well as IT improvement services across Henry Ford since 2011.  At the core of these efforts is the imperative to improve efficiency and business alignment, reduce costs, and enhance information integration within the hospital and ambulatory environments.

With an appreciation for the complexities at the organizational level, Mary Alice played a major role in fostering the organizational capability needed to extract greater value from IT investments.  She is widely recognized for her ability to transform information technology services into highly effective, cross-disciplinary teams responsible for using technology resources to improve services and realize the strategic goals of the organization.

Mary Alice is a registered nurse with an extensive critical care and nursing leadership background and more than 20 years in transforming clinical and business environments through the uses of technology. In her previous roles as Chief Information Officer at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and University Hospitals of Cleveland, she collaborated with academic colleagues, peer institutions and industry leaders on the interpretation of privacy and security and clinical research standards for academic organizations.

Mary Alice has been actively engaged in national efforts to create a sustainable, secure, statewide health information exchange (HIE), offering interoperability between regional and national health information networks to provide access to clinical data and improved, measurable health outcomes.

A Fellow in the Health Information Systems Society (HIMSS), she serves as Editor for the peer reviewed Journal of Health Information Management, the digital publication of HIMSS.  Mary Alice is a nursing graduate from St Vincent’s Hospital, NYC, and holds a BS in Health Care Administration from St. Joseph’s College, and an MS in Organizational Dynamics from the University of Pennsylvania.

Mary Alice is married to Bob Simpson, a retired City Manager and former Air Force Colonel (retired after 26 years of service). They reside in Grosse Pointe Shores with their dog Molly and enjoy gardening, cooking, and entertaining.  Mary Alice has 2 grown children and 4 grandchildren living in VA and Bob has 3 sons and 3 grandchildren living on the east coast.