Health systems can’t integrate their way out of this IT problem

Interoperability may be the most visible sign of fragmented hospital technology, but health IT leaders say the problem can begin much earlier, with how systems are selected, governed and built into clinical workflows. “The easy answer is interoperability, but that’s the symptom,” Sunil Dadlani, executive vice president and chief information and digital transformation officer at Morristown, N.J.-based Atlantic Health, told Becker’s. “You can’t integrate your way out of an architecture problem after the fact.” His point reflects a broader challenge raised by three health IT leaders: Hospitals can make reasonable technology decisions one at a time and still end up with an environment that does not operate as one system. Mr. Dadlani said health systems often build their technology environments “one problem at a time,” with EHRs, imaging systems, scheduling platforms and communication tools selected by different groups and around different return-on-investment cases. Each decision can be rational on its own, he said, while collectively producing an environment that was never designed around a shared data model or identity layer. Closing that gap, he said, requires treating data as a shared enterprise asset, establishing strong governance and making open APIs and data portability nonnegotiable. That architectural fragmentation can also start with governance. Lauchland Roberts, chief applications officer at Memphis, Tenn.-based Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare, pointed to a disconnect between operational and IT governance as the biggest obstacle. “Decisions about clinical and operational workflows should always include IT input,” he told Becker’s. Too often, Mr. Roberts said, IT becomes an afterthought after operational decisions have already been made, leaving technology teams to address downstream technical dependencies that were not considered earlier. Even connected systems can fall short if the workflow itself remains fragmented. Jill Evans, MSN, RN, chief nursing informatics officer at Cleveland-based MetroHealth System, said workflow integration is the greatest barrier to creating a truly connected environment. “Healthcare organizations have no shortage of technology, but too often those tools function in parallel rather than as a coordinated system,” she told Becker’s. MetroHealth is working to address that through its smart room initiative, which connects virtual nursing, AI-enabled patient monitoring and EHR-integrated workflows into a more unified care model. “Success depends not on adding more technology, but on making technology invisible within the clinical workflow so caregivers can focus on patients rather than systems,” Ms. Evans said. For health systems trying to create a more connected technology environment, the leaders’ responses point to a challenge that starts well before integration: designing an enterprise architecture, aligning operational and IT governance, and ensuring that connectivity translates into a simpler clinical workflow. The post Health systems can’t integrate their way out of this IT problem appeared first on Becker's Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.