A CIO dives into the challenges and expectations of IT within the next two years.
Daniel Nigrin, MD, is the chief information officer at Portland, Maine-based MaineHealth.
Dr. Nigrin will serve on the panel "Who Are the Emerging Competitors in Healthcare and Health IT?" at Becker's 7th Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle Conference. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference, which will take place Oct. 4-7 in Chicago.
To learn more and register, click here.
Question: What are you most excited about right now?
Dr. Daniel Nigrin: I'm most excited that most healthcare organizations have finally come to appreciate that information technology can not only be supportive of their strategic goals but can often generate new strategic opportunities themselves. IT is finally becoming the strategic enabler it should have been long ago. Not IT for IT's sake, mind you — but IT as a tool to bolster an organization's overall goals of caring for patients, enabling research and helping ensure healthy populations.
Q: What challenges do you anticipate over the next two years?
DN: I anticipate more staffing shortages, relentless financial pressure and insatiable demand for more of everything from IT. But I'd like to focus on one more issue — new work models are now here to stay; remote work and hybrid approaches are the norm and expected. However, being able to keep those care team members engaged and linked to our overall healthcare mission is now even more difficult when they are so far removed from care settings. We will need to think of novel ways to keep our teams connected to what we are here to do. "Keyboard to bedside" has always been a difficult challenge for us in IT — it's now even more challenging when most of our team members never leave their homes to work.