A CIO’s Challenge for STARS Air Ambulance The case study for STARS Air Ambulance presents an organization in the midst of a transition to a new CIO, Sharaz Khan. Khan entered STARS to discover a severe need for the business and IS infrastructure to be addressed. STARS had previously done much of its strategic planning without the inclusion of IT, which has led to many issues organizationally. Although there are many challenges ahead, Khan must assess and prioritize the problems while gaining support from the CEO and other management as a new member of the organization. It is clear from STARS operations that technology plays a major role in the success and effectiveness of being able to save lives in the cases of emergencies. The rapid delivery of information through the Emergency Link Centre (ELC) allows communication with doctors and hospitals. Assisted by the use of technology, STARS has been enabled to succeed in pursuing its mission of “providing a safe, rapid, highly specialized emergency medical transport system for the critically ill and injured”. Although the organization has not functioned effectively with its IS organization in the past, it has clearly valued the innovation IS brings. This value is demonstrated by the variety of IS projects in development by multiple departments, such as the $500,000 new computer-assisted dispatch system. Projects such as this have potential to innovate and create efficiencies which can provide value to operations. The IS department appears to have followed the trend in moving towards IS Lite (appendix figure 1), with a great deal of outsourced consultants and contractors, in addition to embedded IS functions within other departments. The problem with this implementation is there are no financial benefits to the outsourced labor, costing more money in addition to the loss of management control. The other