Nurse entrepreneur Kenneth Dion, PhD, RN, MSN, MBA, has joined the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing (JHSON) as Assistant Dean for Business Development and Strategic Relationships. Through this newly created position, he will shape and lead JHSON business ventures, establish and enhance partnerships for strategic nursing outreach, and leverage faculty and student expertise to create and advance technologies and other business enterprises.
“We are excited to welcome Dr. Dion to our school and look forward to the experience and knowledge he will bring as a scholar, inventor, and expert in health care systems and the industry,” says JHSON Dean Patricia Davidson, PhD, MEd, RN, FAAN. “Having this kind of business focus will be critical as we continue to expand the boundaries of the profession, further technology development and impact, and broaden the business side of nursing that is much needed to strengthen the reach of health care within our world.”
With 30 years of experience in the health care industry, Dion has served in a number of roles beginning as a transporter in radiology at the Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, a nursing assistant, and firefighter-paramedic. After earning his bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Central Florida, he worked in emergency care and soon began consulting on health care information systems selection and implementation.
Upon completion of his graduate degrees, he launched the first high-availability electronic medical record in health care at Texas Children’s Hospital and has earned patents for technologies developed to enhance health care business objectives and processes. In 1999, Dion founded Decision Critical, Inc., a cloud-based information systems company for meeting the education, compliance, and competency development needs of health care organizations, and has since founded TurnPath, LLC, a health care technology innovation incubator.
Dion has been an active member of professional nursing organizations including the National Student Nurses Association where he served as national treasurer as a student, a board member, and president of its foundation as a professional nurse, and Sigma Theta Tau International where he is currently treasurer. He has master’s degrees in business and nursing administration and a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin. Among his recognitions for service to the nursing profession and health care industry, he is a Virginia Henderson, Billye Brown, and Sigma Theta Tau Fellow.
Looking forward to officially beginning on July 1, Dion says, “It is an honor and privilege to join the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing team. This is a great opportunity to bring even more energy to the nation’s top nursing school and assist in maximizing its current ideas and research. There is a tradition of innovation and leadership at Hopkins, and there are many avenues yet to explore in the effort to defuse this innovation and leadership into mainstream health care for the benefit of nursing and the clients we serve.”
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Located in Baltimore, the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing is a globally-recognized leader in nursing education, research and practice and ranks No. 1 nationally among graduate schools of nursing and No. 2 for DNP programs in the U.S. News & World Report 2019 rankings. In addition, the school is ranked by QS World University as the No. 3 nursing school in the world and is No.1 by College Choice for its master’s program. For more information, visit www.nursing.jhu.edu
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