Marilee Benson, Zen Healthcare IT’s President and Co-Founder has been recently selected to join two important interoperability committees – The Carequality Advisory Committee and the HIMSS Interoperability and HIE Committee. Marilee will be bringing her practical, real world experience implementing healthcare interoperability projects to these industry groups. She is looking forward to collaborating with a very talented team of interoperability leaders working to remove the barriers to effective and efficient health information exchange.

Learn More About Marilee Benson

Marilee has over thirty years of experience in the healthcare information technology sector. After serving in a leadership position at Mirth (now Nextgen), makers of the widely used Mirth open source integration engine, Marilee co-founded Zen Healthcare IT (“Zen”) in 2015 to help healthcare organizations better scale healthcare interoperability.

As President, Marilee has firmly established Zen as an industry leader in the interoperability space, providing enterprise class interoperability solutions to a wide range of healthcare stakeholder such as CRISP (DC / Maryland Regional HIE), Reliance eHealth Collaborative (NW Regional HIE), ADVault (Advanced Care Plans), IMAT and many other innovative healthcare IT vendors and provider organizations.

The HIMSS Interoperability & Health Information Exchange Committee

Under the leadership of Jan E. Larsson (Sr. Advisor, Cambio Healthcare Systems), and Holly Miller, MD (Chief Medical Officer, MedAllies, Inc.) the committee focuses on the advancement of standards-based interoperability and emerging health information technologies.

As the healthcare landscape evolves, interoperability is a key driver towards achieving secure and accessible information, as well as realizing lower cost and higher quality care.

By leveraging the Interoperability & Health Information Exchange content areas, this Committee supports HIMSS thought leadership activities on global and national levels, as well as contributes to HIMSS advocacy and policy efforts around relevant subject matter around the globe.

The goal of the committee is to provide and inform leadership around standards-based interoperability and health information exchange and foster collaboration between HIMSS and other organizations working to progress impactful health information exchange.

About the Carequality Advisory Council

As highlighted on the Carequality Advisory Council Website: The purpose of the Advisory Council is to inform the work of Carequality through its representation of broad constituent groups and a diverse array of perspectives. The Advisory Council is responsible for representing a broad spectrum of healthcare stakeholders to inform the Steering Committee’s decisions about the Carequality interoperability framework. The Council serves a valuable role in assuring the broadest set of interests are reflected in Carequality’s work.

The Advisory Council is constituted to ensure representation for a number of stakeholder groups, with additional subject matter experts from multiple domains providing input as well.

As part of the Advisory Council, Marilee will be helping review and revise draft deliverables, providing input on work Carequality has in the development process, and making recommendations on implementation guides and proposed use-cases.

A Note from Marilee

After several years of focus here at Zen to grow and scale our organization, and support our clients, it was time to reach outward to collaborate with others who are working hard every day to reduce barriers and accelerate health information exchange across the country. It is truly an amazing opportunity to work with some of the brightest minds in interoperability. I am truly honored to be joining these two great industry workgroups. I am confident that the work we will be doing over the next few years will make a difference.

Looking forward to HIMSS 2022 to meet up in person  – you’ll find me in the Interoperability Showcase. 

See you in Orlando!