Healthcare technology is demanding. Keeping data safe, secure and consistent, ensuring availability and accuracy and meeting timeliness requirements is challenging enough for the typical organization. Multiply that by regulatory and compliance concerns, and it’s no surprise that the healthcare technology landscape changes slowly.
Barriers within large, established organizations reduce the speed of healthcare innovation. These impediments are often justified. Organizations must be good stewards of patient/customer information by maintaining the integrity of highly regulated data and processes and providing systemic oversight around security and safety.
But the speed of innovation is vital to maintaining a competitive edge. This balance of rigor and flexibility is fertile ground for agile technology enablement.
Self-provisioned environments
One of the most significant and enduring advantages of traditional operations is establishing a secure, approved environment. One of the most significant strengths to come out of the DevOps movement is the ability to self-provision environments. When we combine these two dimensions, we enter a world where teams can self-provision environments that are templated, patched, secured and approved by their infosec and compliance groups.
Best-of-both-world practices are possible. Every organization can benefit from taking a well-reasoned, balanced look at where they are and where they want to be in the speed of infrastructure change.
Flexibility and cost savings of the cloud
Maintaining enough capacity for peak load – also known as the “Christmas Day Problem” – complicates on-premises capacity planning. Companies purchase adequate capacity for these peak times, even if you rarely experience this peak load.
These scenarios provide impetus to move to a cloud provider. Paying as you go with the flexibility to scale capacity up and down to meet demand is incredibly valuable, particularly for mid-sized healthcare businesses. Moving variable load processes such as adjudication and intensive analysis to a flexible cloud-based platform can also yield significant cost advantage. Cloud-based environments can further reduce the time required to spin up experimental resources, test new ideas and quickly innovate without significant upfront capital costs.
A continually expanding range of cloud-based resources are available under a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement (BAA), providing a safe, secure and compliant way to accelerate healthcare workflows.
Don’t fall behind in your transformation
If you think your organization is falling behind, either in controlling FWAE costs or in overall innovation, don’t panic. There are many models for success. Here are a few ideas to consider.
Network with others who are undertaking the same changes. Every transformation is different. Don’t be afraid to reach out to other industries and segments; there’s something to glean from everyone. Understand what worked for them and what didn’t. Understand in what ways they share your challenges and in what ways they don’t.
Connect with healthcare analysts and vendors. Don’t be afraid to talk to as many as it takes to find a partner that matches your needs. Learn about their approaches, their successes and their challenges.
Lastly, look for ways to get started. Draft a strategy, find a niche where you can begin. The trick is always to find just one more bite-sized piece of progress that you can get started on today!
Read more about using technology to control healthcare costs