Faculty

Faculty Bios

Christine Hudak

Christine A. Hudak, Ph.D., RN-BC, CPHIMS, FHIMSS, is a professor and the director of the health informatics program in The School of Information at Kent State University. She is also a contributing interdisciplinary faculty member in the School of Digital Sciences. She has more than 30 years of experience in healthcare informatics, including teaching, instructional development, systems analysis, systems implementation and data analysis.

Her professional affiliations include the AMIA, ANIA ASHIM, HIMSS and the National Institutes of Health Informatics in Canada. She is a member of the Health Informatics Society of Ireland and is a United Kingdom Certified Health Information Professional. She is the editor of the 4th Edition of the HIMSS Dictionary of Health Information Technology Terms, Acronyms and Organizations. Dr. Hudak has been named one of the Most Influential Women in Health IT for 2019 by HIMSS.¹

She received her BSN from Case Western Reserve University. Her MEd in Postsecondary Education and her Ph.D. in Urban Education Administration were both earned from Cleveland State University (CSU), focusing on adult learning, curriculum development, instructional design, educational administration and computer uses in education. Her dissertation title was Organizational Factors in the Implementation of End User Computing Systems in Ohio Hospitals.

Chelsea Lawton

Chelsea Lawton, MS, RHIA, has more than 10 years of health records and healthcare information technology (HIT) experience. Currently, Chelsea works in the Information Technology division of the Cleveland Clinic as a system analyst supporting multiple clinical and nonclinical applications. Prior to making the jump to information technology, she spent six years as the patient information coordinator in the Health Information Management department. Chelsea is passionate about her work and takes pride in the fact that, although indirectly, she is helping patients receive the best care possible.

In addition to her career at the Cleveland Clinic, Chelsea has also held the adjunct faculty title at both the University of Cincinnati and Kent State University. She has taught many classes, all of them online, over the last 9 years and finds teaching incredibly rewarding.

In 2005, Chelsea earned a Bachelor of Science in Health Information Management from the Ohio State University. A few years later, in 2010, she graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago with a Master of Science in Health Informatics. Chelsea holds the Registered Health Information Administrator (RHIA) credential through the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA).

Marcia Lei Zeng

Marcia Lei Zeng, Ph.D., is a professor in The School of Information at Kent State University. She holds a Ph.D. from the School of Information Sciences at University of Pittsburgh (USA) and an MA from Wuhan University (China). Her major research interests include knowledge organization systems (taxonomy, thesaurus, ontology, etc.), Linked Data, metadata and markup languages, database quality control, multilingual and multicultural information processing, and digital libraries for cultural objects.

Her scholarly publications consist of more than 80 papers and five books, as well as about 200 national and international conference presentations, invited lectures and keynote speeches. She was the PI and Co-PI of two National Science Foundation's (NSF) National Science Digital Library (NSDL) projects. She currently is the PI of an IMLS-funded Linked Data project. In 2014, she was elected inaugural chair of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) Advisory Board. Also in 2014, Zeng was recognized by Kent State University for Outstanding Research and Scholarship, and in 2016, she received the President’s Faculty Excellence Award from Kent State President Beverly Warren.

Jim Lockshaw

Jim Lockshaw has over 26 years of experience in the field of information technology (IT). He spent 15 years supporting hospital billing applications, and worked as a manager in clinical applications at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio. In that role, he successfully led a large team of individuals whose primary responsibility was to implement the electronic health records in the outpatient environment for over 1,200 physicians covering over 35 specialties.

He has participated in several application installs, including an oncology documentation application, a patient health portal application and a patient-tracking application. Lockshaw then moved into a director of applications position at the Cleveland Clinic, where he oversaw the implementation of the electronic medical records to an affiliate hospital. This included inpatient documentation, provider order entry, results reporting, pharmacy, electronic medication administration, operating room scheduling, emergency department triage and tracking. In these roles, Lockshaw was responsible for managing the budget, analysis, build, training and support for each of these projects.

Lockshaw earned his MBA from Cleveland State University and a BS in Computer Science from Youngstown State University. He has been a member of Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) for the past eight years and is a former president of the Northern Ohio chapter. Jim also volunteers at the Free Medical Clinic of Greater Cleveland and has assisted them with their electronic medical record implementation.  

Rebecca Meehan

Rebecca Meehan, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of health informatics (HI) at Kent State University, where she teaches Human Factors & Usability in HI, Inquiry and Assessment in HI, and Health Information Systems. Professor Meehan earned a BS in Biology at St. Mary’s College and then went on to Case Western Reserve University for both her MA and Ph.D. in Medical Sociology and Gerontology.

Professor Meehan is a health informaticist with over 20 years of experience in applied research in health and aging. She has been the project director and senior research associate at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and Department of Sociology, St. Elizabeth Hospital, and Innovative Designs in Environments for an Aging Society (IDEAS, Inc.). Her work in academic research is complimented by industry knowledge in software development. She’s worked in the industry as a product manager and usability researcher for Intuit, Inc. for global enterprise-level software systems. She also consulted independently (Meehan Group, LLC) on usability projects for U.S. and global clients in healthcare and wellness. These experiences allow her to bring a unique perspective for her students and research as having both academic and industry experience in health information technology (HIT).

The focus of professor Meehan’s research in health informatics is improving usability of health information technology (HIT), with special attention to HIT’s use in long-term, post-acute care settings. She is the author of several publications and has presented at both national and international conferences. Meehan is an active member of the HL7 EHR Usability Workgroup, LeadingAge Center for Healthcare Technologies (CAST), Human Factors and Ergonomic Society (HFES), the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS), and the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA).

John Sharp

John Sharp, MSSA, is a senior manager in the Personal Connected Health Alliance of HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society), responsible for connected health, including patient engagement technologies. He is located in the HIMSS Innovation Center in Cleveland. He has been in health IT since 1999. He is adjunct faculty in the health informatics master’s program at Kent State University since 2012. He is the author of several book chapters and journal articles on healthcare information technology, social media and chronic kidney disease. His most recent book chapter appears in Participatory Healthcare. He received his bachelor's and master’s degrees from Case Western Reserve University. He is an advisor to startup companies and accelerators, and he blogs regularly on LinkedIn.

Paul Ylvisaker

Paul Ylvisaker is an exceptional registered nurse who seeks the privilege of utilizing education, nursing skills and life experience to deliver quality, patient-centered care to patients across the developmental lifespan. He currently serves as an adjunct professor of health informatics in the The School of Information at Kent State University. Ylvisaker received his MS in Nursing from the University of Arizona, where he is currently pursuing his doctorate in the same field. He also received his JD from the Saint Louis University School of Law and his BS in Business Management from Maryville University.