Meet our informed, motivated and experienced leadership team:
Allen Byington, Chief Executive Officer
Allen Byington is an entrepreneur with successful experience in business enterprises ranging from automotive, aircraft, communications, broadband technology and Health Information Technology and Exchange. Mr. Byington was the visionary and driving force behind the creation and establishment of Big Bend Regional Healthcare Information Organization (Big Bend RHIO) and the co‐architect of the health information exchange (HIE) technology infrastructure. He is the only non‐healthcare provider on the Big Bend RHIO Board and serves as the pro bono Executive Director. Big Bend RHIO has been nationally recognized as one of the country’s most successful and sustainable HIEs, and most recently recognized as one of the HIE pioneers by the National eHealth Collaborative in July 2011.
A tireless advocate, Mr. Byington has donated his personal time and resources to educate and support the expansion of HIE. He has worked collaboratively with the Florida Hospital Association and the Florida Medical Association to support their federal and state advocacy and has served as a pro‐bono advisor on health information policies for a number of other organizations including the Rural Hospital Council and Florida’s largest Regional Extension Center. Mr. Byington was critical to the success of the Florida Hospital Association’s defeat in 2010 of legislation that would have created a reoccurring hidden tax on hospitals and physicians of more than $10 million to fund the creation and ongoing operation of a state controlled HIE.
As founder and CEO of ElectroNet Broadband Communications, Mr. Byington deployed Florida’s first DSL broadband platform in 1997, bringing next-generation DSL technologies for business class Internet, VOIP and hosted PBX to North Florida. Under Mr. Byington’ leadership, ElectroNet set industry precedence by successfully filing and litigating an anti‐trust claim against Sprint in 2000.
In 2003 Mr. Byington demonstrated his commitment to community and leadership by deploying North Florida’s first fiber gigabit network including a gigabit network dedicated solely to healthcare providers. The dedicated healthcare network centralized connectivity and improved network security for healthcare providers as well as real‐time transport of medical files and large radiological images.
Mr. Byington along with Dr. Dan Kaelin, a Board Certified Vascular Surgeon, recently established HIE Networks, committed to expanding the availability of affordable healthcare provider driven HIE throughout the United States, leveraging their experience and expertise gained as the founders of Big Bend RHIO.
Mr. Byington serves on a number of Boards and Committees including the Tallahassee Economic Development Board and the FL Health Information Exchange Coordinating Committee. Honors and awards received by Mr. Byington include:
- ITFlorida Excellence in IT Leadership Award
- Florida Trend magazine’s Businesses to Watch
- Tallahassee Area Chamber of Commerce Small Business Giant
- Tallahassee Area Chamber of Commerce Technology Business of the Year
Lawrence Dan Kaelin MD, Chairman & Chief Medical Officer
Dr. Kaelin is a vascular surgeon, in private practice with Vascular Surgery Associates in Tallahassee, Florida since 1992. He received his medical degree in 1985 from the University of Louisville, School of Medicine and completed his internship and residency at the University of Florida College of Medicine. He was Chief Resident in 1990-91 and a Vascular Fellow in 1991-92. Dr. Kaelin has conducted research, written extensively and made many professional presentations on a wide range of surgical topics. Dr. Kaelin is Board Certified with the American Board of Surgery with added qualifications in Vascular Surgery.
Dr. Kaelin was a Major in the U.S. Army Reserves from 1988 to 2001 and served as an Attending Vascular Surgeon at Walter Reed Army Hospital.
Dr. Kaelin is a strong proponent for physician adoption of electronic health records. He is a recognized leader in North Florida, providing hours of training and consultation to local physicians, encouraging them on the path to EMR adoption. In conjunction with the Capital Medical Society, he developed an EMR Worksheet to assist physicians in practice analysis, EMR selection and implementation. Dr. Kaelin has served as medical staff consultant to the IT Department at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital.
Dr. Kaelin is a founding board member and Chair of the Big Bend Regional Healthcare Information Organization. He has been instrumental in creating the HIE platform BigBendHealth.com which BBRHIO use for it’s HIE vendor. Dr. Kaelin is a tireless champion in local and statewide initiatives to develop Health Information Exchange (HIE) so that individual EMR systems can share patient medical information. He is also involved in Regional Extension Centers in Florida. His aim is to ensure that clinicians remain involved in the decisions of Healthcare IT, as federal healthcare legislation unfolds.
Dr. Kaelin stays active in the field of health IT and is currently the President of the Florida Vascular Society, a consultant with Cerner, and on the Merck Speakers Bureau for EMR and HIE. He travels throughout the country, providing IT solution-based training and consultation to medical facilities and providers.
Zach Finn, Chief Operations Officer
Mr. Finn has been focused on Health Information Exchange software and business since 2005. Currently he is the Project Director of Big Bend RHIO, the largest HIE in the Southeast with over 500,000 unique patients in the system, processing over 600,000 messages a month, and supporting over 600 users. Additionally, he is the consultant for multiple HIE efforts across Florida. His work in the HIE/RHIO field is from “soup to nuts” and his expertise ranges from fostering social capital with community healthcare leaders to technical system architecture implementation to electronic health record (EHR) interfacing to grant acquisition and management to developing service based business models. Most recently Mr. Finn has accepted a role with the Center for the Advancement of Health IT, the Regional Extension Center for 41 counties in North and Southwest Florida. The REC is a federally funded non-profit physician advocacy program designed to help providers navigate EHR systems and achieve Meaningful Use.
Mr. Finn’s personal vision for Health IT is one of Economically Sustainable, Connected Healthcare Communities that allow a higher quality of patient care at a lower cost. Prior to becoming involved in Health IT Mr. Finn has over a decade of professional IT experience that includes database administration and data warehousing, quality improvement, software development, system design & requirements gathering, project management for complex information technology projects, as well as business development and account management for governmental and private clients.
In addition to our leadership team HIE Networks has a strong group of employees and dedicated support staff.
