Four health IT professionals discussed the intersection of healthcare and big tech during a keynote panel Oct. 11 at the Becker's Hospital Review Health IT + RCM conference in Chicago.
The panel consisted of Stephen Morgan, senior vice president and CIO of Carilion Clinic; Megan Ranney, MD, director of the emergency digital health innovation program at Brown University; Salman Naqvi, CMIO and clinical practice lead at Allscripts; and Tom Stafford, vice president and CIO of Halifax.
A main point of contention between healthcare and big tech is that big tech doesn't seem to understand the differences in healthcare versus other industries, according to the panelists. Healthcare is different when it comes to data, since the data involves patients.
"Big tech companies are looking at healthcare because they're seeing dollar signs. What they're not seeing is the patients," said Mr. Stafford.
Mr. Naqvi said he believes it is not necessarily big tech companies like Amazon, Google and Apple that will do the most disruption in the healthcare industry as companies such as CVS and Walgreens, who are offering new types of healthcare services in their respective pharmacies.
The panelists also discussed what IT strategies work best in their respective systems.
"We put a lot of work into cybersecurity so our backbone is always secure," Mr. Morgan said.
Dr. Ranney said ensuring clinicians are involved in the decision-making process has shown to be very effective at Brown.