UI Health Care will begin a national search for its next associate vice president for information systems and chief information officer. This leadership position leads the Health Care Information Systems team and oversees information technology services, including technical support, applications development, and clinical applications across the health care enterprise. 

Current Associate VP for Information Systems Lee Carmen, BSEE, has announced that in spring 2025 he will start a transition to retirement and remain in this position until a new leader has started.  

“Lee has been a trusted leader with UI Health Care for more than three decades and supported our teams through major technology developments as we’ve evolved as a system,” says Denise Jamieson, MD, MPH, UI vice president for medical affairs and the Tyrone D. Artz Dean of the Carver College of Medicine. “He oversees a team of nearly 600 employees who handle critical, behind-the-scenes work that helps our entire enterprise run smoothly. Large technology changes can be a challenging adjustment as we’ve added new locations and campuses to our system, but having Lee's leadership has made every transition run seamlessly. We are so grateful for his many years of expertise and service that have supported our evolutions as an academic health system.”  

Carmen joined the Carver College of Medicine as director of Information Systems in 1994, directing information technology support for academic, research, and administrative initiatives. In 2001, he was named chief information officer and director of Health Care Information Systems for UI Health Care.  

Over the course of his 30-year career at Iowa, Carmen:  

  • Integrated the Carver College of Medicine and clinical enterprise IT systems into a single organizational unit  
  • Led the selection, implementation, and ongoing optimization of Epic  
  • Partnered with University of Iowa CIO to design, build, and operate a state-of-the-art data center 
  • Helped design and support the operations of the Health Care Support Services Building (HSSB) 
  • Created the Enterprise Project Management Office, Clinical Informatics program, and recruited the organization’s first Chief Medical Informatics Officer and Chief Data and Analytics Officer 
  • Established the UI Community Connect Program, providing Epic services to rural Iowa critical access hospitals 
  • Achieved organizational recognition for ‘Most Wired’ from 2010 through 2024 
  • Named CIO of the Year by Technology Association of Iowa in 2014             
  • Served on multiple state health IT Boards 

 

Lee Carmen, BSEE