Bringing new technology to health care: Jeff’s story

Jeff Volkheimer, senior director of collaborative technology partnerships at Duke Health, began his career here in 2004.

Jeff had been working in information technology for a marketing firm, but after considering a career shift to find challenge and to make a bigger impact, he transitioned into an analyst I role with us on the Web Services team.

“I really wanted to shift my career and work on bigger problems in a more complex environment. Duke Health offered me this opportunity of having a profound impact on patient health,” said Jeff.

Joining Duke Health Technology Solutions (DHTS), the information technology division supporting the health system, became the foundation for a decades-long career with us. In his time here, Jeff has led countless information technology initiatives, including centralizing all web support into one team and integrating ServiceNow into the engine that drives information technology requests across the health system.

Over the years, Jeff has grown in his career, advancing into new roles while working to push Duke Health’s technology ahead of the curve.

Recently, he was promoted to senior director of collaborative technology partnerships and is now playing a pivotal role in our historic partnership with Microsoft. Through the Microsoft partnership, we will adopt new technologies such as Copilot, Azure, Bing Chat Enterprise, and many others – and Jeff will be at the forefront of our progress.

As he continues in his new role working with key stakeholders across the health system to deliver these new applications and services, Jeff says it’s providing him with that unique challenge he was looking for back in 2004.

“This job requires me to think with my head and feel with my heart and that's not something you often get in IT. It's exciting to be part of an organization that's at the forefront of innovation,” said Jeff.

This new partnership with Microsoft marks a major milestone for the future of health care, allowing Duke Health to embark on an innovative road where we can ethically develop a platform for machine learning and generative AI. This will help us streamline processes, improve patient care, and continue to help Duke Health meet its mission of advancing health together.

When looking at his trajectory here, Jeff is excited by how his impact has continued to grow.

“My role at Duke, it began as an analyst I on a web development team and it just doesn't really get much more front line than that. I've been assigned increasingly more challenging and complicated problems to solve over time – and now as the leader of our collaboration with Microsoft, I'm working to bring about a new wave of innovation and technology,” said Jeff.

Join us and help advance health care technology and improve patient care.