IT Review 2023
IT Review 2023 outlines what UTHealth Houston's Information Technology department has been doing in recent years and sets the direction for the future. We hope to inspire a dialogue with the community that helps us fine-tune our technology plans.
IT Review 2023
The Information Technology (IT) department is the central information technology service provider for the university. This department provides support to UTHealth Houston by planning, developing, and delivering reliable, timely, secure and cost-effective systems and services that are needed to transport, process and store information.
Mission & Core Values
The IT Department Mission is to unite behind innovation in digital health, first-class educational technology, infrastructure designed to embrace pioneering research, reliable care delivery systems, and a technology culture that puts our customers at the center of all we do. Our Core Values are courage, facts, fun, professionalism, service, team and value.
Office of the Vice President and Chief Information Officer
Amar Yousif, vice president and chief information officer for UTHealth Houston, provides leadership and oversight for the entire Information Technology (IT) department. The CIO is the primary liaison to other University of Texas components, UT System and the State of Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) in Austin. The CIO represents IT on various councils, committees and task forces.
Administrative and Academic Technologies
Led by Connie Wooldridge associate vice president, administrative and academic technologies
Academic Technology implements and maintains technology solutions to support education, research, and clinics. Some of these solutions include the development of effective online learning and educational materials; online courses and continuing education via the Canvas Learning Management System; document collaboration via UTH-Share (Google for education); development of custom web applications and databases; and cloud service integration with enterprise systems.
Administrative Technology works in collaboration with the UTHealth Houston administrative business areas to provide enterprise-wide technology leadership, strategy, application selection, development, implementation and support for solutions encompassing student information management, finances, human resources, and record management.
Clinical Technology
Led by Dr. James Griffiths, associate vice president, Healthcare IT and Tariq Khan, associate vice president, Epic applications
The role of Clinical Technology is to promote the use of technology in a clinical setting, coordinate campus activities in this area and provide campus-wide clinical applications. Clinical Technology is still largely fragmented among practice plans and HCPC, but as IT continues to support consolidation of services into a single provider, this fragmentation will decrease. Clinical Technology is a collaborative effort providing central direction and services.
Finance and Administration
Led by Diarra Boye, executive director, IT finance and business services
The Finance and Administration team works with the CIO and IT department directors to provide coordinated administrative support to the entire IT department. That includes creating, recording and maintaining budgets and financial records; procurement; records management; billing and receivables; travel; supplies; processing personnel transactions; maintaining departmental files; and coordinating activities and follow-up for the CIO.
Infrastructure
Led by Tony Murry, executive director, IT infrastructure
Communications Technology Services implements, maintains and operates the campus (local and remote) and clinic networks. The group also provides all voice related services to include digital phones, voice messaging, FAX and credit card technologies; and support for all enterprise video technologies that include Microsoft Teams, Zoom, WebEx, and Cisco Meeting Server. Internet connectivity is supported through a variety of different service providers.
The Data Center Operations group operates the university’s primary data centers and administers standards for other data centers on campus. The primary data center is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Unix, Windows, storage and cloud support teams provide technical support for servers and infrastructure, while standard or custom hosting services for departmental systems are administered by this team. Key areas of enterprise-wide support include clinical and healthcare technology systems; email services; database services; and research and educational platforms.
Security & Disaster Recovery Planning
Led by Mary Dickerson, associate vice president of information technology security and chief information security officer
The IT Security and Disaster Recovery Planning team provides security awareness training, IT security policy development, disaster recovery planning for critical services, firewall services, intrusion detection and intrusion prevention services, intellectual property protection and network and server vulnerability scanning.
Application security development resides with the developers and administration of application security belongs primarily with application owners.
User Experience and Support
Led by Bassel Choucair, associate vice president, IT user experience and support
The User Experience and Support group is coordinated through a collaboration of the McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston IT department (MSIT), the UTHealth Houston School of Public Health IT department and the central IT group. These three groups together set standards and coordinate activities on behalf of UTHealth Houston customers.
IT Solution Center
Led by David Posado, manager, IT Solution Center
The IT Solution Center is a central IT support center providing customers with level-one technical assistance and support with UTHealth Houston enterprise systems, clinical applications, and communication technology. This group evaluates, documents, and processes incoming incident and service requests received by telephone, email, and the ITSM user portal; communicates with customers to diagnose issues and walks them through a problem-solving process; reviews user-generated requests to gather additional information required for resolution; and provides prompt, courteous, and professional follow up with our user community.
