Top Challenges Facing Healthcare CIOs

Each vertical market presents its own challenges to CIOs, but few offer as many obstacles as the healthcare industry. They must balance stringent security and privacy regulations with a pressing need to improve IT infrastructure and a mandate to implement electronic health record (EHR) software—all amid the political firestorm of healthcare reform, increasing pressure to cut costs, general reluctance among health care professionals to trust technology and a shortage of IT talent in the industry. The 12 issues presented here all come with their own challenges and stakeholders, while the consequences for failing to address them vary tremendously.

Two parts of the controversial reform bill upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court concern technology. One is the mandate for each state to set up a health insurance exchange by 2014 so consumers can buy insurance on the open market. Even Massachusetts, the state at the forefront of healthcare reform, is struggling to implement the necessary combination of technology that includes content management, ecommerce, CRM and portals. The second is the accountable care organization, a voluntary partnership among providers who aim to give patients more coordinated, and less expensive, healthcare. Accomplishing this requires significant investment in EHR and HIE, as well as robust clinical data analytics and frequent patient engagement (both of which will be covered later).

Medical professionals love smartphones and tablets such as the iPad, which fits nicely in a doctor’s white coat pocket, and the ubiquitous example of a doctor remotely accessing patient records from a child’s soccer game points to the tremendous potential of mobile health, especially in the developing world. CIOs remain way. In addition to the usual security requirements of a successful BYOD policy, healthcare CIOs must contend with HIPAA privacy and security rules, which penalize providers even if users’ personal devices go missing. This means taking an especially close look at which users can access which applications—or even particular data sets within applications—and, if field medics and trauma nurses share touchscreen monitors, robust, role-based identity and access management.