The following is a guest article by Phil Sobol, Vice President, Business Development at CereCore
Today’s healthcare CIOs are pressed to deliver accurate, comprehensive results at a rapid pace with limited resources and financial constraints. Technology investments and decisions based on incomplete data can be costly in terms of time, money, and operational efficiency. A reliable, holistic view of an organization’s technical infrastructure is critical to the IT decision-making process, especially when it comes to mergers and acquisitions, hardware updates, relocations, application rationalization, and licensing alignment.
Most hospitals do not have an accurate physical inventory of all assets in their environment. The very nature of patient care means that peripheral and clinical devices often move to where the patient is. Specialized clinical software equates to a variety of provisioning, IT hardware and licensing requirements. To operate effectively, the first step is to identify every single asset, its purpose, and physical location. The goal is to provide a visual overview of the hospital along with actionable items about each asset for tracking purposes. Optimizing the portfolio of IT assets from a financial, clinical, and technology perspective ensures they are supporting the caregiver or hospital staff with functionality for exactly what they need to do.
An IT asset inventory and analysis program provides an easier way to find, inventory, and analyze all IT assets across an organization to save money, identify problems, and streamline IT support. A complete inventory offers the ability to leverage accurate asset information for procuring only essential items and use physical location data to determine device placement that improves end-user adoption and workflows. As a result, implementation and purchasing decisions are based on lifecycle management standards and best practices.
Visibility Yields Measurable Results
A comprehensive IT inventory goes beyond today’s IT asset discovery tools and includes an assessment of your current technology platforms and device portfolio to identify clinical workflow deficiencies, cost-saving opportunities, and end-user concerns. The process involves a top-to-bottom assessment from a clinical standpoint and an end-user adoption standpoint. IT assets are analyzed and mapped into a department-by-department and floor-by-floor view of the IT infrastructure. Interactive location maps provide access to a web-based, interactive, and dynamic map of physical assets, associated peripherals, and installed software applications.
A discovery, mapping, and analysis project at a 300-bed hospital resulted in significant benefits and measurable outcomes:
Realized annual savings of $520K—eliminated unnecessary spend on software licenses
Improved patient experience—discovered credit card readers were missing in key hospital and ambulatory registration areas
Increased office productivity—targeted 7+ year-old devices used in ambulatory and business office areas
Improved clinician experience—identified departments needing peripheral devices for electronic dictation
Enhanced security protocols—identified critical security vulnerabilities in the network infrastructure
Increased application usability—improved wireless connectivity for facility mobile applications
Asset Inventory Optimizes the Clinical Environment
A focus group of CHIME members was held and attendees discussed the value of healthcare-specific IT asset discovery, mapping, and analysis, including the importance of quantifiable return from a value proposition perspective. Much of the discussion centered around challenges with existing IT Asset systems and making the case to the CFO for this type of comprehensive approach to generate cost savings and optimize clinical and administrative workflows. In one scenario shared with the group, an organization’s CFO requested cutting license costs by 20 percent. In the current clinical environment, post pandemic, where do you begin and how do you determine what assets to target?
With IT discovery, mapping, and analysis, an organization can validate the necessity of licensed applications and avoid deploying software in clinical areas that do not need it. An asset inventory considers clinical and technology standpoints and then applies business logic to determine what is truly needed to optimize the clinical environment.
Benefits of IT Discovery, Mapping, and Analysis
- Identify cost savings for unnecessary hardware and licensing spend, applications, and more
- Expedite accurate collection of IT assets for procurement decisions, plus security and data compliance risk
- Create a department-by-department and floor-by-floor view of IT assets
- Provide critical insights and analysis to align IT with clinical workflow best practice backed by healthcare IT experts
- Determine whether owned IT assets and peripherals are within spec for new EMR or clinical systems
- Perform proper valuation of IT assets and business continuity planning in M&A scenarios
About Phil Sobol
Phil Sobol oversees all sales and marketing initiatives and works with the sales team, delivery organizations and strategic business partners to support our clients’ strategic direction. He has more than 20 years of experience working with organizations to align their business objectives with appropriate enterprise technology solutions. Prior to CereCore, Phil was general manager and vice president of Sales & Marketing for several enterprise resource planning (ERP) consulting companies. He holds a bachelor’s degree in business from Taylor University.
