Finding Leaders for Internet Health Care

Health care must explore creative, new ways to compete for top information technology talent.

By Kris Kyes

Sage Givens is a venture capitalist and managing director, Acacia Venture Partners, San Francisco. She serves on the HealthCentral.com and HealthSouth, Inc boards.

Ken Graham is CEO, Overlake Hospital Medical Center, Bellevue, Wash.

Al Greene is president and CEO of HealthCentral.com.

Mark Yowe, managing partner, oversees the Emeryville, Calif, office of Heidrick & Struggles.

The moderator, Peter N. Grant, PhD, JD, is a partner, Davis Wright Tremaine, San Francisco and Seattle.

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Grant: What is your involvement in ehealth and the Internet, and what leadership issues keep you awake at night?

Greene: HealthCentral is an Internet-based company. We do three things: we have a family of content sites, we have a number of ecommerce sites, and we serve as an application service provider for more than 200 health care institutions (where we license content, tools, and applications). What keeps me up at night? I sleep like a baby (that is, I wake up every 2 or 3 hours and cry). When you are running an Internet company, you function as adult supervision. Most of our programming, engineering, and sales employees have fewer than 5 to 7 years of work experience.