Making the Rounds: Information Technology Supports Innovation at UNLV School of Medicine

Making the Rounds

January 7, 2020 Issue 225

Friends and Colleagues,

At the UNLV School of Medicine and our clinical arm, UNLV Medicine, we know we can count on our information technology professionals to contribute to the delivery of leading edge patient care, education, and research by providing a strong foundation of technology across all of the school’s systems. One reason for our confidence in our IT department is the subject of today’s feature, Cam Johnson, our director of IT operations. He sets his expectations high. Every person who interviews for an IT position is told by Cam the three things it takes to be a valuable member of the IT team..1. Be on time. 2. Be prepared. 3. Do what it takes to get the job done. That, my friends, is a prescription for success -- and not just for IT professionals.

MEDICINE BY THE NUMBERS

1 Million

About 1 million adults in the U.S. seek care in a hospital due to pneumonia every year, and 50,000 die from this disease.

Source: https://www.thoracic.org/patients/patient-resources/resources/top-pneumonia-facts.pdf

Information Technology

Supports Innovation at UNLV School of Medicine

Cam Johnson inside the virtual anatomy lab at the medical school's Shadow Lane campus. It's one of many locations he responds to, handling a variety of IT issues that arise.

It’s a work day, so you can find Cam Johnson, the UNLV School of Medicine Director of Information Technology (IT) Operations, where he usually is just before the sun comes up -- in his office.

“Coming in at 6 a.m. is what I think it takes to get the job done,” says Johnson. “The two hours between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. are so important to getting ready for the day and ensuring that I have things in order for me and my team.”

In today’s modern medical school environment, Johnson notes that IT must be practically everywhere, providing a portfolio of services and capabilities that support education, research, and clinic operations for faculty, students and staff.

Professors are miked so they can be heard. Each class is recorded so students have lectures available for review. At UNLV Medicine, the clinical arm of the school, data entry is critical -- doctors, for instance, need access to electronic medical records (EMR). On and on it goes for IT and the medical school. Computers, telephone systems, data storage, video conferencing -- in so many ways, IT really is it.

“We’ve come a long way in two-and-a-half years -- our team has worked well together,” says Johnson, whose staff of 12 IT professionals serves the more than 1000 employees of the medical school. “I want the IT department to be a partner and enable organizational transformation. Where we come in is helping to make IT easier to use and maximize the value. As the team grows, there will be more opportunities for this to occur.”

While Johnson is reluctant to talk about his accomplishments -- he stresses repeatedly that IT can only work well through a team approach -- Wonda Riner, the UNLV School of Medicine Executive Director for Information Technology, points out that Johnson, in addition to ensuring daily IT operations of the school are attended to, “has also overseen many large scale projects that would likely have failed without his attention to detail and project management skills. During the first half of 2018, Cam oversaw the clinic and infrastructure upgrades needed to support the implementation of Epic (healthcare software) as the EMR for UNLV Medicine. These upgrades included network upgrades and configuration changes, and new computers and printers to meet the Epic requirements. Also occurring during this time was a complete upgrade of the telephone infrastructure to replace an end-of-life system and migrate all users to the Cox Managed Phone System we have today in all of our leased locations.”

Johnson, who as a curious youngster stripped down his grandfather’s John Deere riding mower to see how it worked -- unfortunately, he didn’t know how to put it back together -- has, as an adult, repeatedly been no stranger to figuring out how to put together big IT projects.

In 2016, the then network operations center manager for the UNLV Office of Information Technology (OIT) played a key role in organizing resources for the IT support needs for the presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Network services -- both wired and wireless were provided, with 11 miles of cable running from the Thomas & Mack Center, where the debate took place, to Cox Pavilion, where the media center was located, and into the parking lot, where broadcasters had set up their temporary headquarters. Once infrastructure was in place, OIT personnel were on hand to make sure everything ran smoothly for the campaigns and the 5000 members of the national and international media that converged on Las Vegas for the debate.

The son of a now retired Air Force career man who often moved early in his career to different duty stations across Europe and the United States, Johnson, who was born in Spain, says the spark for his interest in IT came at the age of 13, when his father ordered parts from a magazine for a computer they built together in 1988 -- a time in America when only about 15 percent of American households had personal computers, compared to about 90 percent today.

“Even then I liked the way computers were evolving, always changing,” says Johnson.

Still, he says as a teen growing up in Las Vegas he thought of computers and IT only as a hobby, not as a possible vocation. “I liked the tinkering."

“Coming to the UNLV School of Medicine full time was a once in a lifetime opportunity for me. It’s given me an opportunity to contribute to healthcare in this valley in my profession. It is a good culmination of my career.” - Cam Johnson

While he enjoyed learning some of the ever growing mysteries of computers during his years as a middle school and high school student in Las Vegas, he admits he never could figure out what kind of work his dad was actually doing for the Air Force for about a decade.

“He’d leave on Monday and I wouldn’t see him until the weekend,” Johnson says of his father Mike, who went on to work for the Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE) as a systems analyst. “I was constantly asking what he was doing and he always had some cover story. It wasn’t until I was 18 that he was able to say he flew back and forth to Area 51 in Tonapah to work on the stealth fighter secret project...At one point I thought he might be working for the CIA.”

In high school, Johnson, who emphasized extracurricular activities more than academics, captained the Cimarron Memorial High School football team and was elected student council treasurer. He also enjoyed manning the lights and building set pieces for school plays -- “that was a good melding of my desire to learn technical things and to be involved in school activities.”

Good enough as a 5 foot 9 inch, 200 pound fullback -- he also wrestled and ran track -- to be offered a football scholarship to Iowa’s University of Dubuque, Johnson decided against going to college right out of high school. Instead, he worked for casinos on the Strip, cleaning pools and doing stagehand work for “Mystere,” the Cirque Du Soleil show. “I wasn’t ready for college right then.”

Though he says he was making good money, the work wasn’t fulfilling. He enlisted in the Army in 1995.

“I had a feeling that it was the right thing to do...without being cheesy, the patriotic thing to do...I’m sure my father being in the Air Force shaped this view enough though he never put any pressure on me to do so. I needed to be part of something bigger than myself.”

When the Army, which initially planned on him becoming a member of a tank crew,, found out he knew something about computers, he was assigned to an operations role at Fort Hood, Texas, where he served for three years. That time, he says, “was instrumental in defining who I am today, as it exposed me to the value of planning, communication, getting yourself in order, understanding the big picture and how it breaks down to smaller units and discipline.”

Even before his enlistment was up, he decided to enroll at UNLV. “I knew then I wanted to work in IT.” In 2001, he received his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration-- Management Information Systems degree. That same year he created the first student help desk at UNLV while working for OIT as student computing help desk manager. At that time, there were separate help desks for staff and students.

Before starting as UNLV School of Medicine Director of IT Operations, Johnson, as network operations center manager for central IT, played a pivotal role in the design, building and operations of new data center for the university.

He also got a solid sense of what the medical school would need while working as the main campus IT liaison with the school that would accept its first medical students in 2017.

“Coming to the UNLV School of Medicine full time was a once in a lifetime opportunity for me,” he says. "It’s given me an opportunity to contribute to healthcare in this valley in my profession. It is a good culmination of my career.”

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Interviewed: Dr. Mahendran Jayaraj

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