By John Halamka’s standards, healthcare IT is pretty average. In fact, he’d only give the sector a B-minus. Over the last decade many changes have occurred politically, clinically and economically that have impacted healthcare information technology. So as the healthcare industry looks to “reset” again, Halamka, CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, chairman of the New England Healthcare Exchange Network, co-chair of the national HIT Standards Committee, a member of the Massachusetts State HIT Council, and a practicing emergency physician, plans to take a hard look at where the industry stands at HIMSS16 later this month.
“Always be innovating” is a phrase we hear all the time in technology. However, with the long adoption cycle of health technology, and the impact an update will have on patient care, old technology is frequently left in place to minimize any negative consequences.
We are seeing a change in attitudes in 2015 and 2016 as many hospitals and providers are beginning to ditch their antiquated EHRs and moving to larger vendors, usually Epic or Cerner. Many factors are contributing to this such as hospital mergers.
One thing that keeps top-performing systems on top is employing a best-of-breed solution at the integration layer. Doing so eliminates the fears of interoperability and frees the IT department to implement technology that each department chooses as the best for their needs and workflow.
The best-of-breed integration platform, of course, is Corepoint Integration Engine — rated the #1 Integration Engine by KLAS Research for seven straight years.
