At the Becker's Hospital Review Annual CIO Strategy Roundtable in Chicago on Nov. 4, three industry leaders came together to share their views on current trends in health IT.
One trend identified through the panel-style discussion was the new types of affiliations that are emerging in the health IT sector. "It's not just acquisitions and mergers, it's partnerships that never would have formed in the past," said Chris Belmont, MD, vice president and CIO at University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
Russ Branzell, CEO of CHIME, said a trend he sees is the "I" part of "CIO" coming into its prime. Today, it's all about what the CIOs are doing with the information and data. "Everyone is doing the research and using big data now," he said, and "hospitals and health systems are looking at what can be done with the information."
Another emerging trend is hospitals' comfort level with health IT is increasing, and technology hospitals and health systems were once weary of is now being widely used. Concerning this trend, Brett Davis, general manager of ConvergeHEALTH by Deloitte and principal at Deloitte Consulting said, "cloud-based delivery is really catching on." However, Mr. Davis emphasized the importance of those in the healthcare industry to stop always chasing the "next hot thing" in technology because they'll never catch up.
The panel also discussed HIEs and how they are expanding in number and in reach. Although HIEs are popular today, Mr. Belmont believes the vast majority of them that are already in place will fail. "The biggest issue is that HIEs stop at borders," he said. "That shouldn't be the case, and they should be patient-centered," he added.
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