Michelle McNickle, New Media Producer
5 technologies every hospital should be using
September 20, 2011
With new health IT products springing up left and right, you may find yourself swimming in a sea of apps, updates, frameworks and systems.
Shahid Shah, enterprise software analyst and owner of the blog The Healthcare IT Guy, breaks it down to the five technologies every hospital should be using.
1. Single Sign-On (SSO) and common identity management with CCOW integration. "Start to phase out all applications that cannot meet common identity or SSO requirements," said Shah. The benefits of SSO are many, and include end-to-end user audit sessions to improve security reporting and auditing as well as significant password help desk cost savings. Likewise, Clinical Context Object Workgroup (CCOW) was designed to allow information sharing between clinical and health IT applications, Shah wrote on his blog, adding that "if a hospital can get their labs, <a href="/directory/electronic-medical-record-emr" target="_blank" class="directory-item-link">EMR, and CPOE vendors to become CCOW compliant, they can share patient context instead of the user having to log in and out of each application separately."
[See also: SSO can save providers more than $2M annually.]
2. Programmable and app-driven content management and document management systems. Both should be "a core for electronic health records instead of special-purpose EHR systems written decades ago," said Shah. "For starters, EHRs should be connected to the right document and content management systems like SharePoint or Alfresco." And when an EHR vendor can't meet your requirements, said Shah, what should be encouraged is meeting the requirements in an adjunct system that works with the EHR.
3. Virtualization. According to Shah, virtualization should be a priority. "As soon as possible, make it so that no applications should be sitting in physical servers," he said. "Start to phase out those apps that cannot be virtualized. When apps are virtualized, they can easily be scaled and recovered." On his blog, Shah added that environments with a lot of legacy systems embrace virtualization since it allows them to maintain their software while significantly upgrading hardware. "In the past, we've not seen this happen in healthcare," Shah wrote. According to him, simple cloud adoption is next once virtualization becomes the norm.
[See also: Content management reduces load on IT.]
4. HTML5 and JavaScript: Start moving your web and mobile applications away from HTML4 and to HTML5 and JavaScript, said Shah. "This means you should upgrade to IE9 and modern browsers as quickly as possible and start phasing out apps that can't support newer browsers." According to an article titled "<span class="s2">Superior user interface through HTML5" by Praveen Srivatsa, CTO of eMids, HTML5 brings a few key changes to the semantic web, such as offline support. "HTML5 provides a complete offline way of working where you can take your 'Web' application and access the local machine storage," Srivatsa wrote.
Showing 7 Comments
Mariano Maluf say: 5 technologies every hospital should be using - Virtualization
September 26, 2011 | 18:14 PM GMT
Great article! I think it touches on very relevant trends, although it's hard sometimes to nail down "THE" top 5.
I believe that Virtualization is certainly well placed on this list. With production-grade platforms available nowadays, it provides substantial benefits in regards to IT simplification, which is a goal every IT organization aspires to achieve.
As a key enabling technology that allows IT organizations to embrace an “IT as a Service” model, Virtualization (and the next evolutionary step – cloud computing) are clearly non-reversible trends in the IT industry. To provide some perspective, currently more Virtual Machines (VMs) are being deployed compared to physical servers. In fact, according to some studies, more VMs are being deployed in 2011 than in 2001-2009 combined.
All of this would need to be articulated in a phased strategy that could show direct value back to the business. Such a plan should include the appropriate mechanisms to ensure that the migration of application constructs to the virtualization platform has no negative impacts. On this front, it is vital to understand the business application landscape, which in turn requires the adequate levels of instrumentation.
The most immediate benefits of adopting these technologies will be reflected in cost avoidance and hardware maintenance operational improvements, but the story with virtualization doesn't have to end there. The technology is now at a place where it truly delivers significant value in terms of time-to-market, agility & portability, rapid recovery and policy-based automation. These elements, along with self-service and consumption-based metering, are fundamental building blocks of the next generation of IT infrastructures. When combined with integrated, new application development frameworks, a significant leap in capabilities is possible.
In this plane, a mixed (hybrid) approach of on-premises and secure off-premises virtualized environments could help move Healthcare IT organizations further into the role of a technology business enabler, while significantly lowering costs.
Mariano Maluf - CTO, GNAX
VMware vExpert & VTSP - ITIL & Six Sigma
Jesper Langeman say: I Fully Agree
September 22, 2011 | 17:37 PM GMT
Some very good points! I specially like that Single Sign-on and Identity management are the first point mentioned. I don't think that we all fully have grasped the real benefits of SSO when it comes to security and efficiency. I just read a very intereresting article that explains very clear how healthcare organizations could benefit from a SSO remote management system with clear user privileges: http://bit.ly/pLX7VY
Jerry Bishop say: What about the business?
September 22, 2011 | 08:31 AM GMT
What would the list look like if it wasn't so focused internally on IT? Instead if the list was focused more clearly on the technologies needed to support improving care and business outcomes.
I understand the importance of underlying and enabling technologies, and asset tracking. But in terms of value to the organization and its priorities for improved financial performance and patient outcomes where do these rank?
Natalie Hodge say: Nice Article Shahid
September 21, 2011 | 14:24 PM GMT
Nice Article Shahid,
SSO, cloud, HTML5, and geolocation are the new realities that deliver value in the consumer internet world. They are a must for any competitive healthcare organization wishing to stay relevant in the post reform era. Access to patient data on HTML5 coded apps and devices is a must. I would add the recognition of obselete business models requires an analysis of emerging health models incorporating ecommerce, content, community and membership. These will continue to emerge and replace ailing Fee for Service sick care business models as the components of reform are executed in the next 36 months.
Natalie Hodge MD FAAP
Curt Klingelberger say: iPad?
September 21, 2011 | 14:20 PM GMT
The iPad seems conspicuously absent. Given it's portability, screen clarity, connectivity capabilities, native content, and ability to support healthcare applications, research and reference tools, the device is a game changer and addresses needs physicians have been complaining about for three decades.
C. Klingelberger, CPHIMS, ITIL v3, PMP
CWK & Associates, LLC
Spencer Hamons say: Another Opinion
September 21, 2011 | 13:32 PM GMT
Of course, everyone is going to have an opinion on this topic...so I would like to add my list of "essential" technologies that every hospital should be using.
1. Natural Language Processors - NLP - Natural Language Processors constantly scan the patient record for the presence or absence of certain key terms. While my experience with NLP has been primarily in the context of the free text clinical documentation, organizations considering the installation of voice-recognition technologies should begin looking at NLPs now. As the paths of written documentation and vocal documentation begin to converge, NLPs will play a larger and larger role in assuring clinical documentation meets clinical guidelines and provides real-time feedback to clinicians. NLPs coupled with voice recognition has the potential to truly differentiate one hospital's clinical information systems from a competitors, allowing that hospital to potentially attract more physicians due to the ease of system use. Just like the maturity of some of the location-based application functionalities, these applications are just beginning to really make sense for mid-market organizations rather than that larger institutions that have historically taken advantage of this technology.
2. Contact Center / Database Integration - I am always amazed at how few facilities use call center / database integration to improve the throughput of the various back-office functions that take place in our environment. These are the systems that ask a patient to enter some key information at the onset of a call, and when the call is connected, the worker is presented with that patient's information immediately. This is the same technology that is used in the financial, insurance, retail, and just about any other industry that has large call center operations. I think that this has been overlooked in healthcare because we don't have "traditional" call centers like these other industries have. Instead, our call centers are distributed through dozens of clinics and departments across the organization. Regardless, the functions of those answering calls are still the same...to get information from a client and provide a service back to the client in the most efficient way possible.
I would like to point out that essential technologies don't always have to be a "technology" in order to be effective. An example is at Wyoming Medical Center in Casper, WY where I recently visited. This hospital wanted to reduce medication errors. Rather than engaging with a vendor for a point solution that called for tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars in capital funds and months of implementation time, the hospital took a different approach. In a nutshell, any time a nurse is working with preparing or delivering a medication, that nurse puts a red lanyard around her neck. When the red lanyard is on, no one is allowed to interrupt the nurse...no water cooler chat, no physician coming by to ask a question...no interruptions. If I recall correctly, the result was somewhere around a 60% reduction in medication errors. I only wish that I was able to see such a significant improvement in a key safety metric with such little financial investment.
Good article Shahid and Michelle
Spencer Hamons
http://itpodcast.org
mateo Ferreira say: Virtualization - server and apps!
Great list - I just saw this article today via the newsletter so I'm a little late to comment.
I totally agree with virtualization being on this list, but up until recently, virtual apps were hard to justify, due to the fact we couldn't scan them for vulnerabilities and report back to them for our compliance checks. We recently deployed eEye's Retina CS product (http://www.eeye.com/Solutions/Business-Need/Virtualization-Solutions). As far as we know, it's the only product out there that scans virtual apps running via VMware's ThinApp technology.
We know the apps are vulnerable, we just need to identify the risk so we can account for it. Now we can.