Yesterday, we shared a number of the insights into the health data and interoperability needs in healthcare. Today, we’re going to share insights from our expert community for some of the more classic IT infrastructure needs in healthcare.
Charlie Clarke, Senior Vice President of Technology at hc1
In its simplest form, treat infrastructure as cattle, not as a pet. Staying on top of equipment retirement, utilizing virtual infrastructure that is easy to upgrade and maintain, and not allowing endpoint devices to become obsolete.
Dan Kompare, Vice President of Information Systems at Harmony Healthcare IT
With 15+ years of experience in information technology, I’ve observed our collective security first mentality increasing focus on vendor management and long term system compliance and sustainability. More vendors mean more systems and more data silos.
This is common in healthcare, especially with the merger and acquisition activity that occurs in our industry. A HIMSS statistic cited the average healthcare system as having 18 EMRs. That’s a lot of cost, complexity, labor burden, and risk for the IT department. Until that data is more centralized and secure, it can create challenges for HIM teams, clinicians, and patients.
Less is more when it comes to legacy. We need to consolidate data stores, continuously update and maintain data protection mechanisms, provide diverse resiliency strategies and vigilantly analyze access behaviors.
Shawn Van Doren, Chief Strategy Officer and Partner at Intellis
I see five trends in health IT infrastructure that people should be watching: cloud computing, digitalization, information exchange, AI, and wearables. Network segmentation, security, and risk assessments are also critical to the future of IT Infrastructure.
As more clinical devices join healthcare’s IoT, the burden to secure these devices increases exponentially. Finally, organizations must never postpone maintenance of their IT infrastructure. Deferred maintenance has massive repercussions for IT project timelines. For example, extensive pre-work to uplift network infrastructure is often a prerequisite for vital EHR enhancements.
Matt Donahue, CTO at CloudWave
Ensure that an infrastructure management program is in place, which includes:
- Solid change management process (“good change management isn’t just Steve down the hall with a spreadsheet. It includes spelling out every change to your environment.”)
- Asset inventory management which includes a truly holistic inventory of your environment
A security-first policy in which the entire organization buys into, and processes are changed to fit these security requirements. When the time comes for you to do a system restoration, it can make the difference between turning it around in a week versus in a day.
Dr. Tamir Wolf, CEO & Co-founder at Theator
The healthcare industry has access to sensitive patient data, requiring the highest levels of confidentiality when considering new technology. Though it’s taking a bit longer compared to other industries, healthcare organizations are moving from on-prem solutions to the cloud. This move should be coupled with novel approaches to protect the data they collect and store, utilizing more advanced HIPAA-compliant IT applications with official privacy and security credentials. The continuous addition of new rich data sources [e.g., video] and remote work and collaboration becoming ubiquitous accentuate the need for innovative approaches and best-in-class security tools.
Health system CIOs must ensure that their IT infrastructure is cost-effective. To maximize ROI, they should look for solutions that span multiple departments, can aggregate data from diverse datasets, and eliminate redundant data collection and analysis, and ensure that the data is clean so it can actually be used.
Successful utilization of an IT solution requires a seamless implementation. This can be undermined by insufficient human resources during the implementation process. While complete “Plug-and-Play” solutions are not realistic for complex offerings in healthcare, a fully managed software solution could make the IT team’s lives so much easier, and is often a selling point for advanced healthtech SaaS companies.
In many organizations, failing to build IT infrastructure correctly may, at best, induce a temporary loss of revenue; in healthcare systems, the results of such a misstep can range from marginal to catastrophic including gaps in accessing vital patient information, data protection, interoperability and loss of healthcare consumer trust.
Chris Larkin, Chief Technology Officer at Concord Technologies
Healthcare is different. Stability of infrastructure means that our customers, healthcare providers and payors, can continue to reliably serve patients. High availability infrastructure means that patient records can be transmitted so that care can be provided as a patient moves from care giver to care giver, and physicians can complete orders from pharma to labs to radiology.
Sameer Bhat, Vice President, Sales and Cofounder at eClinicalWorks
Healthcare practices need IT services that scale quickly and efficiently with patient needs and practice goals. Cloud-based networks support flexible yet secure operations to keep patient and practice data safe and fully accessible.
As the industry becomes more data-driven, cloud-based services increase interoperability and contribute to a more holistic and complete patient experience while streamlining workflows, increasing profitability and minimizing physician and staff burnout.
Rob Dreussi, Chief Information Officer at HCTec
Healthcare IT leaders should focus on mobility and remote solutions. As organizations prepare to phase out aging systems, they should migrate to cloud services to manage future expansion and capacity upgrades more effectively. Capacity management and the ability to scale efficiently is imperative as we utilize more AI services and build in access to big data. Additionally, internal networks must have solid wireless infrastructures with real-time monitoring to ensure performance and reliability.
Lots to chew on in these comments. What would you add to the conversation?
I was surprised that more didn’t comment on the desire of many CIOs to get out of the infrastructure business. While I think this shift is happening at many organizations, it doesn’t mean that infrastructure doesn’t matter. It just means that you need different governance processes to ensure that your outsourced infrastructure is working effectively.
