Becker's Hospital Review

23 Q: What is the most useful skill a CIO can have? Mr. Canfield: This must be building the right team. No one CIO is going to have all the skills necessary to manage the technology, set the strategy, be an active part of the senior leadership team, manage the vendors, keep up with regulatory changes and a myriad of other responsibilities. Knowing your own strengths and weaknesses and building a team to adequately cover all the requirements is necessary. Mr. Hess: The healthcare CIO needs to have an ability to see the big picture and the small details that make up that big picture. Many IT leaders can see the big picture or the small details, but I feel the best CIOs have the ability to see both. The ability to create strategy and oversee execution to help remove barriers is incredibly important. Mr. Kinsella: In my opinion, teamwork is the most important skill. Note that it does not always mean team leadership — though it often does — but sometimes, being a sounding board or a good follower is equally important. Part of teamwork is having the experience to appreciate how individuals con- tribute effectively to team objectives, which requires communication, process standards, etc. But it's recognizing that on our best days we are leaders of the band — not soloists. Mr. Lewkoski: CIOs need to be involved in the strategic planning process. That requires large, visionary thinking that doesn't get tangled in the weeds. We must be able to think beyond the challenges of operations, high-demand integration issues and deadlines. You need to surround yourself with a great team to not only handle the day-to-day but [to be] ready to tackle the ever- increasing project load. Mr. Ong: I'd say one of the greatest skills a CIO can have is an understanding of the healthcare business. Our business of being a CIO is to align the tech- nology with the goals of the organization, and if you don't understand how a hospital operates, the value you can bring is diminished. Mr. Richardville: There is not just one, but several. [A CIO] needs to be a strategist, teacher, student, collaborator, contributor, challenger, thought leader — many of the same skills any senior executive needs to have. You can't just bring the technology knowledge. Mr. Smith: The ability to communicate up, down and sideways is arguably the most important skill for CIOs today. Helping the business understand the critical role technology must play for enabling effective care coordination, managing the health of populations, fostering business intelligence, remov- ing variation and cost and providing a great customer experience is a tall or- der. To make that case in non-technical business terms requires that the CIO and IT organization learn how to communicate in business terms. Managing strong relationships is a close second. Q: What do you see as the most "disruptive" technology in healthcare today? How are you responding or how do you intend to respond to it? Mr. Canfield: The ubiquitous nature of mobile connectivity devices and the expectations they create with our customers. We operate in a somewhat rural and [financially] depressed area and have the benefit of not needing to be early adopters or leaders in the development and deployment of these tech- nologies. We are monitoring what is happening across the country and have regular discussions about what and when we will deploy. Mr. Hess: There seems to be a plethora of disruptive technologies right now in healthcare from mobility advances to device integration to location ser- vices to telehealth to surveillance and many others. I see two technologies that are still early in their maturity that will truly be game-changing once we figure out how to harness the power of them. Display and visualization technologies will change the traditional comput- ing experience for clinicians and patients. The movement from desktop PCs and tablets to even smaller form factors (e.g., smartphones, wearable devices, etc.) will require different methods for displaying the applications, data and information, and we are starting to see some early capability that will be rev- olutionary once matured. [The other advancement is] truly advanced clinical decision support em- bedded in the EHR. Everyone does some form of clinical decision support, whether through order sets or alerts, but when we can transform data into learning and then inform the clinician and the clinician experience in a way that integrates well with his/her workflow, we can and will make a difference. Mr. Kinsella: Certainly the Internet has been the story over the past decade, removing constraints of time and place. Looking down the road, I am excited about the translation of genomics to commercial and clinical applications such as personalized medicines and predictive analytics. I see that as incred- ibly disruptive, in both positive and negative ways. Our preparation for the future includes continued investment in infrastructure, clinical integration and analytics. Mr. Lewkoski: Mobility and mobile apps are a very promising way to im- prove patient engagement but this also includes large challenges with inte- gration, patient team continuity and security and privacy. We are addressing this in several ways but do not want to get way out in front and experience serious mishaps. Mr. Ong: From the technology side, the cloud continues to be an area of op- portunity to deliver solutions as well as achieve operational efficiencies. That continues to be "disruptive," even though it's been around for a while. More advancements with the patient portals, too. Given our need or per- ceived need to achieve better patient engagement, we have to look at the tech- nical modalities a patient would favor. We found patients visit our website 50 percent of the time using a mobile device… it's about how they engage with their care, from scheduling appointments to interacting with caregivers or paying their bill. All of those things need to be that much more advanced as we engage with patients. Mr. Richardville: There are many in this space as well, but I would say both mobility and virtual care are two technologies that are enabling us to provide access and deliver care in places that, five years ago, not many would have predicted to be possible. They surfaced at the same time, and often don't see one without the other. Traditionally, the patient has come to us for care, now we can go to the patient. "Given our need to achieve better patient engagement, we have to look at the technical modalities a patient would favor. We found patients visit our website 50% of the time using a mobile device." — Richard Ong, Vice President and CIO of Saint Vincent Hospital

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