Renovating Healthcare IT

Book excerpt: Healthcare IT is under tremendous pressure in today’s environment: Budgets are shrinking; staff are in short supply; cloud, mobile, and data are driving expansion and innovation. Consumer expectations are high while agility and speed to market for many HIT organizations is low. The exponential growth of data sources and the need to empower healthcare with data-driven intelligence is pushing capabilities. The words "digital transformation" are infused in just about every discussion and serve to amplify organizational expectations of IT. In this environment, IT departments have to retool, rethink, and revise their way of operating. Few have the option of starting from scratch; the vast majority of organizations have built IT functions over decades. Now, it’s time to remodel and renovate for the future. This book walks the reader through the process of determining what type of IT function they have today and what they’ll need tomorrow. It discusses how to assess and analyze IT capabilities and then develop and implement a plan to renovate in place. By retooling now, the IT function can successfully meet the growing demands of the organization in the future. When approached in a planful manner, this process of renovating can energize the entire organization and help foster innovation and transformation along the way.