| | August 201919UTLOOK Healthcare Tech We are entering a time of dramatic transformation within medical care with a focus on technology. Every clinician I speak with expresses elevating needs and expectations for how technology will support them in care delivery. As a healthcare CIO, it can be a daunting task to determine what the right approach is for your organization and clinical teams.Throughout my career, the approach I have found most effective in navigating these challenges is to put the patient at the center of all decisions. If you design your environment and culture in that manner, technology will allow clinical capabilities to reach new levels of excellence in healthcare. Technology doesn't forget the patient is first.The cost of healthcare in the United States is high and our nation's combined clinical outcomes do not reflect the investments being made. Although we may not be able to solve the larger problem, we must all tackle this issue within our own systems when making strategic decisions around the technology portfolio. This is where technologists must become dedicated business partners to our clinicians and hospital operators. Before we use technology to provide automation, we must ensure we understand the business at a level that allows us to drive constructive disruption. Often, if we simply reframe the question being asked so it translates to patient value, we will come to very different conclusions.The focus of value-based healthcare is now driving us to care models that rely on evidence-based guidelines where adherence is tied to financial models. As we incorporate the functionality to enable this care model into our clinical applications and track the analytics to measure compliance, we should all be challenged to consider how to ensure patients can be easily flagged so that physicians can make care plan adjustments as needed.As seasoned healthcare technologists, we can be challenging patients or caregivers. I recently learned this Technology EnablesPatient EmpowermentBy Kristin H. Darby, Ex CIO, Cancer Treatment Centers of America®CIO INSIGHTS
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