Becoming a Data Driven Organization

by Bruce Nelson

I had the opportunity to listen to a webinar hosted by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) titled Becoming Data-Driven: Is Your Infrastructure Strategy Holding You Back?  The keynote speaker for the presentation was Michael Archuleta, CIO, Mt. San Rafael Hospital in Colorado.  Mr. Archuleta took over a hospital system that had significant downtime, little focus on security and generally bad culture as it related to IT’s place in providing patient care.  Mr. Archuleta loosely define a bad culture as any strategies or ideas related to technology that were not focus on providing patient-centric care. 

The initiative was driven by the belief that data is an asset to the organization.  As the evaluated how to transform to a Data Driven organization the organization realized it need to first focus on creating an IT infrastructure that could support data driven solutions in the future.  They focused on improving:

• Uptime
• Security
• Virtualization strategies
• Collaboration tools

With the necessary IT infrastructure in place they are now in the position to capture and utilize data to provide improve a patient experience and outcomes.

As a leading provider of IT Managed Service to healthcare provides we work with clients to address these challenges.  Understanding a practices goal related to patient care and data, then helping them create the infrastructure to achieve those goals.