NENIC Board Members 2023 - 2024

President 

1 year

Lynda Powers, MBA, MS, RN-BC is the Director of Clinical Informatics/CNIO at Wentworth-Douglass Hospital (WDH).  Lynda has worked in the Information Systems and Clinical Informatics field for over 21 years, first as a Manager of Applications, then Director of Information Systems and Applications and now in her current position for the past 5 years.  As the Director of Clinical Informatics/CNIO, Lynda led the successful deployment of Mass General Brigham’s eCare (Epic) System as the Program Director in 2019. 

Lynda has been an RN for over 36 years and has worked in many areas of nursing including Medical-Surgical/Telemetry, Cardiac/Pulmonary and Diabetes Rehabilitation and Nursing Education before moving to Information Systems and Clinical Informatics.  She received her Associates Degree in Nursing from NHTI, her BSN from UNH and her MS in Healthcare Administration and MBA in Healthcare Informatics from New England College.  She is Board Certified in Informatics Nursing by ANCC. 

President-Elect

1 Year

open

Past President 

1 year

Andrew Phillips, PhD, RN, is an Associate Professor at the MGH Institute of Health Professions and a Faculty Nurse Scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital.  Dr. Phillips serves as Director of Nursing Research at Spaulding Rehabilitation Network working with nursing staff on clinical quality improvement most recently the impact of hand hygiene technology on compliance, hospital acquired infections and contract tracing during the COVID pandemic.

Dr. Phillips received his PhD in Nursing Informatics and BS in Nursing from Columbia University School of Nursing. He also holds a BA in Economics from Washington University in St. Louis and has worked as a staff nurse in the pediatric intensive care unit at Westchester Medical Center in New York.  He was a pre-doctoral trainee at the Center for Evidence-Based Practice in the Underserved at Columbia University School of Nursing and a co-investigator in the Health Information Technology Collaborative at Weill Cornell Medical College examining the early stages of health information exchange.  Later as a policy advisor, Dr. Phillips examined the application of federal mandates around qualified health information technology on the specific legislation and regulations needed to ensure health data security, compliance and feasibility within a statewide health exchange network.

Prior to entering the practice of nursing and informatics, Dr. Phillips was an actuary and consultant to health and pension benefit plans.

Secretary

1 year

Sue Whetstone is a registered nurse who has been practicing in the field of Nursing Informatics for 23 years. She received a BS in Nursing from Fitchburg State University in 1983 and a Master of Science in Nursing Administration in 2008 from the University of Rhode Island. She attained board certification in Informatics Nursing in 2003 and is a member of Sigma Theta Tau, ONL/AONE, HIMSS and NENIC.  She is also certified in Epic November 2021 Clinical Documentation.

She has extensive experience in both clinical informatics and clinical nursing.  She is currently the Director of Clinical Informatics for the Lifespan system in Providence, RI and acted as the Acute Care Project Leader during the big-bang implementation of Epic at Lifespan in 2015. Prior to that role, she was the Administrative Director of Inpatient Surgical Services and Nursing Informatics at Rhode Island Hospital, a Lifespan Partner.    

As a nursing informaticist, she has been involved in a variety of initiatives to improve both patient safety and clinician efficiency, including  implementation of CPOE, BCMA in the inpatient and ambulatory settings,  clinical documentation , a nurse driven heparin protocol, an insulin calculator, and more recently, disaster level documentation.

As a Member at Large, she plans to contribute to NENIC’s mission of enabling nurses to transform healthcare through informatics and will enthusiastically represent NENIC members in whatever capacity the board deems necessary.

Treasurer Past

Ms. Furlong has a Master’s Degree in nursing administration from Northeastern University and was Board Certified in Nursing Informatics in 2020.

Deb has been a member of Nursing Informatics organizations in the Boston area serving on the Boards of Boston Area Nursing Informatics Consortium – BANIC which became NENIC as President, Treasurer and on the Education and Development Committee since 1991. She is currently a member at large.

She has presented at national and regional informatics meetings as well as guest lecturing at Simmons College and Northeastern University.

Ms. Furlongs most recent experience was Nursing Director, Informatics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Prior to that she was employed at the Boston VA Healthcare System as a systems manager for ICU clinical information systems for 35 years. Her clinical background was as a Senior staff nurse in the Surgical ICU. The computer system that Deb implemented at the VA in the late 1980’s was donated to the Smithsonian Institution as an example of the first bedside clinical information system.

Her expertise includes, flowsheet clinical documentation, reporting, device integration and nursing focused implementations of solutions to improve nurses’ workflows.

Deb continues to support the NENIC board with her expertise of the NENIC web platform, financial requirements and providing historical knowledge of the NENIC organization. 

Treasurer Current

Director of Membership/Recruiting

2 years

Sarah Langmead is a Registered Nurse with over 18 years of experience in nursing informatics. She is the Application Manager for ClinDoc/Stork and Orders at Tufts Medicine. In this role, she manages a team of analysts focusing on inpatient workflows. She has also held positions as a Senior Application Coordinator at Mass General Brigham and as a Clinical Informaticist at St. Vincent Hospital. She is passionate about using technology to improve the quality of care for patients and nurses. She is also a strong advocate for nursing education and research.

Director of Marketing/ Communication

2 years

Ms. Christine Suchecki MSN, RN-BC is currently the Director of Nursing Clinical Services, for Clinical Informatics, Mass General Brigham Digital.   She has broad experience in healthcare information technology over the last 9 years across the Mass General Brigham Healthcare System, starting with implementation through application support, optimization, and expansion of technology and integration in nursing.   Ms. Suchecki has an MSN from Duke University and is Board Certified in Nursing Informatics through ANCC.  Prior to Ms. Suchecki’s entry into to the domain of informatics, she practiced in cardiac step down, holing unit level leadership positions including as resource nurse, nurse preceptor and lead documentation improvement efforts through local practice committee.   Ms. Suchecki has been a NENIC member for many years, and most recently held a member at large position on the board. 

Director of Education/ Development

2 years

Ms. Wolski currently holds the position of Program Director of Informatics for Nursing and Patient Care Services at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital.  Initially hired as the Clinical Lead for the implementation of the EHR her role has expanded to Program Director to account for her added responsibilities in the day to day management of clinical systems and end-user support locally.  Wolski has been an RN for more than 30 years, spending the majority of her career in critical care and has held certifications as a critical care RN. She has spent the last 8 years supporting implementation as well as ongoing support of many clinical systems, end users and informatics projects.  She received her Master’s of Nursing from Emmanuel College with a concentration in Education and in the past been an adjunct faculty teaching nursing informatics at Emmanuel College at both the BSN and MSN level.  Wolski is Board certified in Informatics by ANCC. She currently sits on the Board of New England HIMSS as a member of the clinical advisory council whose function is to coordinate continuing education events/sessions for clinical members of NE HIMSS.  Wolski was elected to the Alliance for  Nursing Informatics Governing Directors Steering committee as an at-large member.  Her term runs from June 2020-June 2023.  Wolski is a member of the NENIC Education committee and is interested in continuing to develop quality educational opportunities for all NENIC members.        

Member-at-large

2 years

Ms. Gray received her Master of Nursing, in Informatics, in 2004. Jennifer has been a member of NENIC during that time frame as well. Ms. Gray is quite passionate about healthcare informatics.

Jenifer’s nursing career started in the Med/Surg field advancing to Labor and Delivery for most of my practicing years. Often staffing a resource/charge position. Being an early adopter of advancements of new technology in her unit was ideal. Often filling the role of super user or admin support for electronic documentation. This has brought me to her current position supporting the Mass General Brigham (MGB) Epic system.

With MGB Jennifer has spent the early years managing the Stork team. Ensuring the populations that care for mom/baby during an inpatient admission supported the staff and the patients. Also managed the Behavioral Health go live which required multiple redesigns to meet our unique needs within the MGB network. Ms. Gray maintains build support for these areas, and they continue to thrive.

Jennifer has been selected to become a senior project specialist for our MGB Digital Health Inpatient Team. Through this position she was fortunate to have implemented MyChart Bedside across our organization. With this initiative, over 5 different teams across Digital Health and IS collaborated on the successful implementation meeting the complex needs of each site.

Member-at-large

2 year

Lori Connors is a registered nurse, who has been practicing in the field of Nursing Informatics for 15 years. She received her BS in Nursing from Rhode Island College in 1982 and a Master of Science in Nursing Administration in 2008 from the University of Rhode Island and attained board certification in Informatics Nursing in 2020. She is also certified in Epic May 2022 Orders.  She has experience in both clinical informatics and pediatric clinical nursing and is currently a Clinical Informaticist for the Lifespan system in Providence, RI, and acted as the Orders Project Team Coordinator during the big-bang implementation of Epic at Lifespan in 2015. Before that role, she was the Manager of Nursing Informatics at Rhode Island Hospital, a Lifespan Partner. As a nursing informaticist, she has been involved in a variety of initiatives to improve both patient safety and clinician efficiency.   She is an Adjunct Professor of Pediatrics at Rhode Island College since 2008, responsible for clinical education (including computerized documentation, BCMA) and simulation activities. As a Member at Large, she plans to contribute to NENIC’s mission of providing a forum for networking, education, and information exchange for nurses and other healthcare professionals to enhance their professional development and further the nursing informatics profession.   

Member-at-large

1 year 

Ms. Furlong has a Master’s Degree in nursing administration from Northeastern University and was Board Certified in Nursing Informatics in 2020.

Deb has been a member of Nursing Informatics organizations in the Boston area serving on the Boards of Boston Area Nursing Informatics Consortium – BANIC which became NENIC as President, Treasurer and on the Education and Development Committee since 1991. She is currently a member at large.

She has presented at national and regional informatics meetings as well as guest lecturing at Simmons College and Northeastern University.

Ms. Furlongs most recent experience was Nursing Director, Informatics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Prior to that she was employed at the Boston VA Healthcare System as a systems manager for ICU clinical information systems for 35 years. Her clinical background was as a Senior staff nurse in the Surgical ICU. The computer system that Deb implemented at the VA in the late 1980’s was donated to the Smithsonian Institution as an example of the first bedside clinical information system.

Her expertise includes, flowsheet clinical documentation, reporting, device integration and nursing focused implementations of solutions to improve nurses’ workflows.

Deb continues to support the NENIC board with her expertise of the NENIC web platform, financial requirements and providing historical knowledge of the NENIC organization.

Regional Reps

2 years

Barbara Jones MS, RN-BC (RI)

Lynda Powers MS, MBA, RN  (NH) 

Sandra McPherson DNP, RN-BC CPHIMS (CT)

Martha Vrana-Bossart MSN, RN (ME)

Janis Yannotti RN (VT) 

National Reps

2 years

Mark Sugrue, RN-BC (HIMSS)

Denise Goldsmith, MS, MPH,RN, FAAN (AMIA) 

Paula Wolski MSN, RB-BC (ANI)

Ex-officio Member

Ms. Zielstorff is a living legend in the field of Clinical and Nursing Informatics. We are honored to have her guidance when she is not traveling and exploring the world.

CIN Liaison

Dr. Leslie Nicoll RN, PhD has more than 35 years of experience in nursing and healthcare and has worked in clinical practice, research, and academia. Prior to founding Maine Desk, she worked as a Senior Research Associate at the Muskie School of Public Service and Associate Research Professor, College of Nursing and Health Professions, University of Southern Maine. She has been the Editor-in-Chief of CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing since 1995.