Healthcare IT leaders shoulder a staggering range of responsibilities. They must support the daily technology needs of sprawling health systems, safeguard patient data, meet clinical and financial objectives, and drive long-term digital transformation, all while keeping pace with rapid innovation. And they’re doing it within an increasingly fragmented ecosystem, where hundreds of disconnected point solutions often compete rather than coordinate.
Despite these challenges, IT leaders remain grounded, pragmatic problem solvers. They work to advance their organization’s immediate goals under intense financial pressure, even as they lay the foundation for long-term transformation. That future demands a scalable IT infrastructure and streamlined, integrated solutions — tools that enable more efficient operations and unlock new possibilities for care delivery.
The urgent need to streamline healthcare IT and reframe its role in operations was a central theme at the 2025 symplr Healthcare Operations Summit, held in partnership with Becker’s Healthcare. The event brought together IT and operational leaders from across the country to explore how health system leaders can leverage technology to transform healthcare delivery.
Key insights from the summit are summarized below.
Where health system priorities meet the IT roadmap
symplr CEO BJ Schaknowski summarized four ubiquitous challenges faced by most U.S. healthcare organizations:
- Persistent labor shortages, particularly among clinicians, requiring enhanced productivity
- Cost pressures
- Managing the complexity of an overwhelming number of IT solutions
- Navigating and maintaining increasing security threats
In a real-time poll during symplr’s summit, healthcare IT leaders ranked financial pressures as their most significant challenge.
These organizational pressures shape nearly every priority on an IT leader’s agenda. They’re not only the champions of technology, driving innovation to address labor, clinical, financial, and operational challenges — they’re also the executors. Beyond advocating for digital solutions, they lead cross-functional teams through the complex processes of selecting, deploying, and optimizing them.
Zafar Chaudry, MD, senior vice president, chief digital officer and CIO at Seattle Children’s, emphasized that before implementing technology, IT leaders must first determine the problem they’re trying to solve. “If you’re going to drive change in your organization . . . it’s going to be because you understand what problems people in the organization have,” he said.
Too much tech, too little efficiency
Technology has become integral to solving healthcare’s most pervasive problems and operational bottlenecks, but the sheer number of tech solutions used across health systems is hurting productivity.
Todd Jones, director of market intelligence at symplr, highlighted key findings from the Compass Survey: health systems often rely on hundreds of IT solutions (some even reporting more than 1,000), and 80% of IT leaders see an opportunity to consolidate them. As health systems grow more digitally complex, addressing this sprawl has become increasingly critical. The proliferation of point solutions means more vendor contracts, multiple logins, inconsistent user interfaces, varied patching processes, and fragmented security protocols. The result is a highly complex environment that reduces efficiency, heightens cybersecurity risk, and increases cost.
“Fragmented processes and technology, that’s where inefficiency resides,” said Terri Hanlon-Bremer, MSN, RN, executive vice president and system COO at Cincinnati-based TriHealth. “If we can resolve that, it would make finances better.”
Tools that work for healthcare teams — not against them
While health systems have made significant strides in adopting clinical technologies, progress on the operational front has often lagged. Many organizations still rely on outdated tools that strain workflows and limit visibility across departments. Amy Olson, group vice president of business applications at Advocate Health (Charlotte, N.C.), noted that despite decades of tech adoption, health systems continue to face challenges in implementing effective operational solutions.
Ms. Olson reflected on the early days of clinical operations-focused innovation — first came enterprise resource planning systems (ERPs) to support growth, followed by widespread adoption of electronic health records (EHRs). As EHRs matured, many health systems upgraded or replaced them. Then came the adoption of various revenue cycle management tools. However, during this time, tools that focused on operations weren’t as highly prioritized, and many core operational technologies remained unchanged.
“We never got to the rest of the operational technologies,” Ms. Olson said. “They were ‘good enough,’ but they are not getting us where we need to go. Now is the time to bring these disparate systems together to make it easier.”
Brad Shaink, executive director of innovation and business applications at Houston Methodist, said his team is focused on building the “hospital of the future,” which is enabled by smart tools. “When we think about technology, it’s to enable caregivers and individuals to do more,” he said.
For Ms. Olson, technology is more than a means to improve financial performance; it’s a powerful enabler of workforce well-being. She views streamlined systems as a way to reduce staff burnout and improve retention. “If you’re not burning your people out, if you’re not turning them over as fast, there’s real money there,” Ms. Olson said.
‘The next frontier’ in streamlining operations
Just as IT leaders aim to solve healthcare’s most pressing operational challenges, symplr is equally committed to delivering tools that ease complexity, enhance efficiency, and support sustainable systemwide improvement.
“We help deliver value by solving problems that you can’t or don’t want to solve yourself — typically with greater impact than you might otherwise achieve,” said Mr. Schaknowski.
The symplr Operations Platform marks a shift from fragmented point solutions to a unified, integrated approach to healthcare operations. Tony DiGiorgio, symplr’s chief architect, described the platform as a cloud-based solution developed in partnership with AWS and designed to support security, governance, compliance, and scalability.
The emphasis on scalability resonates with Chris Sacinski, vice president of IT applications at Advocate Health. When reviewing IT solutions, Mr. Sacinski said cybersecurity is the most important factor, but this has become table stakes. After cybersecurity, he prioritizes scalability along two dimensions: the ability of a vendor’s product to scale with the organization’s size, scope, and data needs, and the scalability of the operational business model itself.
Beyond scalability, the infrastructure and ecosystem of symplr’s Operations Platform support a consistent user experience and include an API-first design for interoperability and extensibility. It also powers a centralized data platform that turns information into actionable insights. Building on this foundation, symplr is integrating AI within a standardized framework.
The platform’s goal is to drive efficiencies across operations. “We tie our solutions together to help remove waste from the process and drive efficiencies,” said Nydia Boswell, vice president of product management at symplr.
This shared vision underscores a broader shift in healthcare IT: moving from fragmented tools to integrated solutions that truly streamline operations. As symplr focuses on eliminating waste and improving efficiency, leaders recognize that the moment for meaningful transformation has arrived.
“It’s the next frontier,” Ms. Olson said. “It’s what we’ve always wanted to get to. We’ve been saying it for 10 years, but there was always something else. Now we’re there.”
To learn more about symplr, visit www.symplr.com.
