Here Is An Interesting Discussion Of The Thinking Needed In Hospital Health IT Strategy. Worth A Read.

This appeared a little while ago:

Crafting a Next Generation IT strategy

Posted on Jul 09, 2014

By John Halamka, CareGroup Health System, Life as a Healthcare CIO

During my 16 years as CIO, I've witnessed the transition from client server to web, from desktops to mobile, and from locally hosted to cloud.   

As Beth Israel Deaconess merges and acquires more hospitals, more practices and more care management capabilities, what are its strategic IT choices?

I will not even mention "best of breed", because I think the industry has abandoned such a strategy as unworkable in an era when everyone needs access to everything for care coordination, population health, and patient/family engagement.

The choices are basically two

a.  Single monolithic vendor application for everyone everywhere
b.  Best of Suite - the smallest number of applications/modules that meet the need for business integration (defined in the graphic above)

It's extremely popular among academic medical centers, ACOs, and healthcare systems to choose "A", often at great cost.

BIDMC has a 30 year tradition of building and buying systems balancing costs, agility, and functionality.

As I plan for the next generation of IT systems, I favor "B" and believe I can achieve our business goals in shorter time, at lower cost, with less risk.

Lots more here:

http://www.healthcareitnews.com/blog/crafting-next-generation-it-strategy

I do like the discussion that follows but in reading you need to be aware that this organisation is culturally as advance in Health IT as is anyone in the world. The level of organisation competence and IT maturity is very high and for this reason this advice may not suit those further down the learning curve and needing more help to get where they need to be.

Useful reading for all Health IT strategists.

David.