healthcare

Healthcare is experiencing an unprecedented transformation.

Motivated by the need to meet new regulatory requirements in the U.S., including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and to receive incentives from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s (ARRA’s) Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) provision, many healthcare providers are investing to modernize their legacy IT infrastructure and clinical applications. In addition to meeting compliance issues, these early adopters are discovering numerous advantages from their investment in IT – not only in cost savings, but also in improved patient care, tightened information security, advanced collaboration, increased transparency and trackability, and ‘connected care.’ Keep reading →

Government agencies are flooded with a tidal wave of data. But a number of healthcare agencies are facing particularly challenging obstacles to achieving their missions in a digital and data interoperable world. This is particularly true for regulatory healthcare agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

As outlined in the agency’s “FDA Science and Mission at Risk” report dating back to 2007, the FDA anticipated many of these challenges. The report detailed new data sources coming from new digital sciences including the use of molecular data for medicine (e.g., genomics, proteomics, and pan-omics), wireless healthcare, nanotechnology, medical imaging, telemedicine platforms, electronic health records and more. Keep reading →

COMMENTARY:
As part of Government Technology Research Alliance’s new HealthTech initiative, I have spent the past several months conducting research with Health IT leaders from health care organizations, governments and technology providers in order to better understand the needs of this new and growing community of IT practitioners.

While still in its infancy (and some claiming it has not even been born yet!), the application of information technology to the field of human care provides one of the most exciting, practical and literally life-changing examples of how IT can have a profound impact on an industry. Keep reading →

A survey report released today of the CIOs of 48 states, the District of Columbia and two territories shows this to be a year of evolving roles, changing capabilities and trying workloads for IT executives. The result: a new, dynamic environment for CIOs consisting of four Cs – clout, change, collaboration and consolidation. Keep reading →