Becker's spoke to a number of hospital and health system CIOs across the U.S. to discuss how their role is changing and what issues, technology and trends they are watching out for in the second half of the year.
Changing roles and responsibilities
The chief information officer role is evolving. The executive who was once tasked with overseeing information technology in their health system is now being looked at as a leader in other areas as well.
CIOs are now being seen as a strategic leader, who focuses on health system's operations and patient experiences.
As healthcare becomes more consumer focused, CIOs are tasked with improving the patient experience through patient engagement technology.
Areas of concern for CIOs
Some challenges CIOs are facing in the industry today are tight tech and security labor markets.
As hospitals and health systems compete with tech companies and federal agencies for skilled employees in the IT sector and cybersecurity sector, they are having to increase labor budgets by more than 25 percent to compete with other industries.
Another issue CIOs face is cybersecurity. Ransomware attacks are at an all-time high for hospitals and health systems with more than 244 electronic data breaches of healthcare organizations happening in the first half of the year.
Although no single organization can fend-off every attack, CIOs are shoring up their resources to help prevent or stop them before protected health information is exposed or systems are taken down.
New areas of interests for CIOs
CIOs see the healthcare sector investing in more innovative new technology as a growing number of health systems further their advancement in software, sensors and other technologies that can enhance care delivery.
CIOs are looking at facial recognition technology, greater analytics capabilities, interoperability, improved ambient scribing and cloud transformation as potential growth areas.
2022 has seen an increase in health systems adopting or planning to adopt public cloud platforms. This has become an interest to CIOs as they look to see how the cloud and new digital innovations can help tech leaders address new patient needs and transform their organizations' business models.