At the Becker's Hospital Review Annual CIO Strategy Roundtable in Chicago on Nov. 4, four industry leaders came together to provide their insights on evolving issues in the health IT arena.
Hospitals and health systems are going through a paradigm shift, and healthcare organizations are becoming more focused on improving quality of care and making care patient-centered. Regarding health IT, R. Mike Faris, president and CEO of GlobaEos, said the shift in healthcare is going to cause "the barriers of the past to go away." The healthcare industry is working on getting patients more involved in their care, and Mr. Faris believes technology is going to help that happen.
Although some of the barriers in health IT might be disappearing, many challenges still exist. One of those challenges is effectively using information that can help improve patient care. Joseph M. DeLuca, MA, managing practice director at IT Optimizers, said "getting people to understand and work with the information and then going out and applying it is more of a barrier than getting the information originally."
Quality information also plays a vital rule in population health, and Earl Steinberg, CEO of xG Health Solutions said health IT provides the accurate information used. Health IT's role in population management "is to transform data into information and information into action," said Mr. Steinberg.
Although health IT is playing an increasingly important role in the healthcare industry, at many organizations there is a "lack of focus or empowerment in health IT," said Susan Wiemeyer, managing director of U.S. Health and Life Sciences at Microsoft Corp. "Empowerment means health IT has to be engrained in the hospitals, and in an empowered world, IT needs to be at the table," she said.
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