George (Buddy) Hickman
FCHIME, LCHIME, LFHIMSS, CPHIMS, CHCIO

George Hickman, FCHIME, LCHIME, LFHIMSS, CPHIMS, CHCIO, is Interim Vice President & Chief Information (CIO) for San Ysidro Health, a large Federally Qualified Health Center organization serving the underserved in Southern California. He is responsible for overseeing all information technology, activities throughout the San Ysidro Health system.

Hickman has previously held three other academic health sciences network CIO posts. He was a healthcare consulting partner at Ernst and Young LLP, has worked with Price Waterhouse Coopers and started his career as a hospital project engineer. He has served health provider organizations across the U.S. as well as for the Ministry of Health in Singapore and the U.K. Health Authority.

He was named the 2007 College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHiME)/Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) healthcare CIO of the Year.

Hickman is a former board chair, former Foundation board chair, former Education Foundation board chair, a charter member, and is a Life member and Fellow of CHiME.  He is also a CHiME CIO Boot Camp faculty member. He is currently secretary-elect for the CHIME board.

He is past board chair, past executive compensation committee chair, and a Life Fellow member of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). He is also a HIMSS Analytics past charter board member.

Hickman is the board secretary for MedAllies, a national HISP for Direct exchange.  He is also a founding past board and executive committee member for the Health Information Exchange of New York (Hixny). He sits on the Cybersecurity/ Forensics Program Advisory board for State University of New York at Albany. Hickman has served on the Better Healthcare for Northeast New York regional Medicaid Reform (DSRIP) board of directors and the board of Saratoga Health Partners, LLC, an urgent care joint venture. He is an advisory board member emeritus for KLAS and sits on the editorial advisory board for healthsystemcio.com as well as several associational, local, state industry and association committees.

He is a frequent speaker and lecturer on a variety of health IT- related topics and has published extensively on a variety of health IT-related topics, including co-authoring, The Healthcare IT Planning Fieldbook.

He holds a BS and an MS in Engineering from the University of Tennessee.