Healthcare IT: Challenges and Value Proposition

This assignment examines the difficulties faced by healthcare systems in adopting IT despite significant investments. It analyzes issues like the lack of evidence for effectiveness of wearable technology, challenges with the fee-for-service payment model, physician reluctance to share patient information, data entry burdens, time lags affecting return on investment, and vendor selection processes. The assignment highlights the need for a robust healthcare IT strategy that addresses these challenges to deliver genuine value.

Running head: HEALTHCARE IT VALUE PROPOSITION
Healthcare IT value preposition
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1HEALTHCARE IT VALUE PROPOSITION
Despite of the enormous investments made in IT by healthcare system, there are
problems that hinder healthcare to adapt to various technologies. Numerous wearable devices are
used by healthcare system like sensors, wristbands, smart clothes and headsets transiting huge
amounts of data from blood pressure and heart rhythms. However, there is less evidence that
wearing those bands can actually overcome elevated BP or abnormal heart rhythms as compared
to people who do not use them (Tayntor, 2016). This shows that IT technologies do not address
the real issues or problems faced by physicians.
Monetization is another problem that withhold healthcare to make IT investments. In
healthcare, it is difficult to pay for the technologies like portable computation and mobile
communication in the form of handheld devices that is capable of running third-party software.
The current healthcare system is fee-for-service model and need to move to pay-for-value as this
payment model financially rewards hospitals and doctors for cost of services and volume rather
than quality of outcomes they are intended to achieve (Patel & Kannampallil, 2014).
Another problem is that physicians are reluctant to disclose medical information to the
patients. However, with electronic health records (EHRs) patients assert their rights to access to
their own health information posing a physical barrier between doctors and patients. Physicians
want to use more user-friendly tablets that are mobile and easy to enter and access data. Data
entry becomes tiresome for physicians rather than paper that may give rise to a situation where
there is leaving or skipping of major clinical details (Delil et al., 2017). Technologies like
macros or smart lists are required with alerts that help to reduce medical errors.
‘Time lag’ is another factor that affect IT investments in healthcare where effect that is
observed may be immediate, late or near term. In this context, there is need for empirical

2HEALTHCARE IT VALUE PROPOSITION
evidence on lagged effect of IT on healthcare performance methods. Time lag also affects
appropriate return on investments for various IT projects. Differences in durations and time lag
affect healthcare policies on product lives and depreciation rates of different IT resources
affecting cost, quantity and quality of healthcare influencing provision of subsidies (Das,
Yaylacicegi & Menon, 2011).
Healthcare organizations are unable to achieve substantial benefits from IT due to various
issues. Healthcare IT vendor selection process is much needed in healthcare to define goals, for
regulatory requirements, information needs, budget, IT strengths and business strategies before
reaching the successful selection. Healthcare organizations select single vendor or best of breed
enterprise resource planning. Single vendor strategy comprise of enterprise resource planning
(ERP) software is used where products are designed to integrate both clinical and administrative
applications data over multiple locations. It helps to streamline routine processing of routine
electronic data like claim management providing frontline administrators to track accounts and
success ratios (Ford et al., 2013).
Breed strategy integrate software components from multiple vendors and development of
custom components within hospitals. The main objective of this enterprise system is to be more
closely aligned with organizational unit requirements and especially clinical practice references
of medical staff members (Ford et al., 2013). However, these vendor selection processes have
certain drawbacks like protection from authorized data and data compromise or co-mingled with
other clients. Encryption of data and back up is important for healthcare data protection
(Blachowicz et al., 2008).

3HEALTHCARE IT VALUE PROPOSITION
References
Blachowicz, D., Christiansen, J. H., Ranginani, A., & Simunich, K. L. (2008). How to Determine
Future EHR ROI. The Journal of Healthcare Information Management, 22(1), 39.
Das, S., Yaylacicegi, U., & Menon, N. M. (2011). The effect of information technology
investments in healthcare: A longitudinal study of its lag, duration, and economic
value. IEEE transactions on engineering management, 58(1), 124-140.
Delil, S., Çelik, R. N., San, S., & Dundar, M. (2017). Clustering patient mobility patterns to
assess effectiveness of health-service delivery. BMC health services research, 17(1), 458.
Ford, E. W., Huerta, T. R., Menachemi, N., Thompson, M. A., & Yu, F. (2013). Health
information technology vendor selection strategies and total factor productivity. Health
care management review, 38(3), 177-187.
Patel, V. L., & Kannampallil, T. G. (2014). Human factors and health information technology:
current challenges and future directions. Yearbook of medical informatics, 9(1), 58.
Tayntor, C. B. (2016). Successful packaged software implementation. CRC Press.