Optimization Dominates CHIME17 Discussions

“Our EHR Implementation is done”

“We completed our EHR roll-out last year”

“The last EHR module has gone live”

With these words, CIO presenters at the recent CHIME Fall CIO Forum (CHIME17) ushered in a new era in Healthcare IT. Instead of EHR implementations dominating the discussion, optimization was the hot topic of discussion at the event.

“It’s clear to us that CIOs are dedicating more time and energy towards optimizing their systems rather than just implementing them”, says Ed Rucinski, Senior Vice President Worldwide Healthcare Sales at Nuance and CHIME17 attendee. “Our clients, for example, are looking for ways to simplify the documentation physicians have to do in their EHRs so that they can focus their attention back on helping patients.”

Finding ways to better utilize the EHR infrastructure was the subject of many CHIME17 sessions. In one, Sallie Arnett, Vice President Information Systems and Chief Information Officer at Licking Memorial Health Systems, presented how her organization is leveraging EHR and patient monitoring data to detect the early signs of sepsis. Over 62 lives were saved through the work of Arnett and the staff at Licking Memorial.

These results would not have been possible without the investments made in EHR implementations and other digitization efforts.

Several sessions at CHIME17 were centered on the changing role of CMIOs. For the past several years CMIOs have been synonymous with EHR implementations. Now with EHRs up and running, CHIME presenters spoke about how CMIOs were morphing into CHIOs – Chief Health Information Officers – charged with extracting clinical value from the data within the hospital’s systems. This shift in focus is further evidence that healthcare is beginning to move beyond implementation and that we are entering a time of EHR optimization.

The new focus on optimization is a welcome development. It signifies that we are finally near the end of the road-building phase of the inudstry’s EHR journey and we are getting to the phase where we start building things to make the roads useful (like gas stations, diners and cars).

Personally I am looking forward to what the next few years will bring. It will be exciting to see how decision support tools, predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, personalized medicine applications and population health systems will leverage the data that is accumulating in EHRs. The next few years will be truly interesting for CIOs.

About the author

Colin Hung

Colin Hung is the co-founder of the #hcldr (healthcare leadership) tweetchat one of the most popular and active healthcare social media communities on Twitter. Colin speaks, tweets and blogs regularly about healthcare, technology, marketing and leadership. He is currently an independent marketing consultant working with leading healthIT companies. Colin is a member of #TheWalkingGallery. His Twitter handle is: @Colin_Hung.

   

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