The new IT chief of Browns Mills, N.J.-based Deborah Heart and Lung Center told Becker’s he plans to leverage data and AI to help providers make better clinical decisions while ignoring the “shiny object” in favor of tangible benefits like return on investment.
Ralph Porpora was appointed vice president of information services and CIO of the specialty hospital in June, having previously worked in IT leadership roles for health systems in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Becker’s caught up with Mr. Porpora to discuss his plans for his new role, and the biggest challenges and opportunities facing health IT leaders today.
Question: What are your plans and goals for your new role as CIO of Deborah Heart and Lung Center?
Ralph Porpora: As CIO here at Deborah, my focus is to achieve alignment of our organization’s technology capabilities with our overall strategic direction. To that end, I’m establishing a strong technology foundation, especially as it relates to our system and network infrastructure, cybersecurity and business process automation areas. I’m also passionate about optimizing our EHR and software applications, making sure we’re extracting maximum value from our investments in these areas to deliver the highest possible quality of care for our patients and benefit to Deborah.
Q: What unique opportunities and concerns does a CIO at a heart and lung center have (compared to a CIO at a general hospital or health system)?
RP: At Deborah, we pride ourselves on high standards of quality for our clinical excellence and patient outcomes. As CIO, I’m making sure our technology meets the demands of those high standards, especially as it relates to clinical decision support and interoperability.
As a smaller, specialty hospital we can’t always match the resources of a larger health system, but our size also allows us to be much more nimble in using technology to solve business and clinical problems more quickly. Because we’re a unique specialty hospital with a 100-year history, we have a rich longitudinal dataset that provides greater insight into making the best treatment decisions possible for our patients. As CIO, I’m partnering with my colleagues to build technology solutions that allow us to leverage this data to improve the quality of our clinical care decisions for our patients.
Q: Where does AI fit into your IT strategy at Deborah Heart and Lung Center?
RP: AI is increasingly playing a greater role in our overall IT strategy. On the clinical side, we’re pursuing opportunities that leverage AI to support our clinicians in their daily workflow, whether it’s to provide ambient documentation in patient encounters or using AI tools to summarize large amounts of data for presentation back to clinicians to enhance decision-making. We’re also implementing AI and robotic process automation to gain efficiencies in our back-office processes as well.
Q: What is the biggest challenge in health IT nowadays, and how do you plan to address it?
RP: One of the biggest challenges facing healthcare IT is delivering continual innovation in a cost-effective manner, oftentimes with shrinking budgets and reliance on resources that are already tasked with the demands of day-to-day operational responsibilities. The key to meeting this challenge is to resist chasing the “shiny object” projects without clear benefit and focusing on thoughtfully deploying technology solutions that deliver tangible benefits to patient care, quality outcomes, provider efficiency and ROI.
Q: What is the biggest opportunity in health IT, and how do you plan to take advantage of it?
RP: The challenges and pressures currently facing healthcare IT overall have never been greater. At the same time, it also presents a unique opportunity for technology to play a greater role as a strategic enabler at Deborah. The strides we’ve made with EHR interoperability and patient experience mean we have more data than we’ve ever had before. We’re leveraging this data to unlock its value and foster innovation while reducing cost and improving patient care.
