Top Five IT Challenges Facing Healthcare Technology Leaders

Publication Date: 19/09/2024

Written by

Rohinee Lal

Cranfield, UK, 19th September 2024 – Healthcare CIOs are IT leaders who are responsible for overseeing technical processes and data management across hospital networks and health systems.

As healthcare landscapes continue to evolve, CIOs are navigating a multitude of challenges as they strive to keep their organisations on the cutting edge of technology and advanced patient care.

Through our extensive and ongoing discussions with CIOs across North America, Europe, and APAC on a wide range of healthcare technology topics, we have learned about these challenges firsthand. The top five challenges healthcare and hospital IT leaders have told us they are facing as they navigate the dynamic intersection between providing quality patient care and leveraging advances in technology are:

Interoperability and Data Exchange
Cybersecurity
Regulatory Compliance
Healthcare AI and Machine Learning
Budget Constraints

1- Interoperability and Data Exchange Challenges

Within healthcare networks and across hospitals, disparate IT systems continue to not effectively communicate with each other making data exchange across different electronic health records and other health-related IT tools cumbersome and inefficient. Streamlining standards such as HL7 and FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) are starting to help by providing a set of rules that allows healthcare systems to exchange and upload data more efficiently enabling patient and provider access to EHRs along with improving health information sharing between payers and providers.

However, implementing FHIR across all software systems remains elusive for many providers resulting in data silos. Many hospitals rely on outdated legacy systems and infrastructure and CIOs need to consider the complexities of upgrading or replacing these systems to support digitisation while minimising overall costs and disruptions to patient care.

The ONC’s Cures Act Final Rule is an example of US legislation that supports seamless and secure access, exchange, and use of electronic health information for patients and providers. The legislation calls on the healthcare industry to adopt standardised application programming interfaces (APIs) to allow individuals and providers to securely and easily access structured EHR information through online applications. This legislation has the potential to move the dial on this challenge, but only time will tell to what extent.

Healthcare IT leaders and CIOs are constantly working on ways to create unified data exchange solutions within their organisations to reduce medical errors and improve coordinated patient care with timely exchange of important information. Interoperability blueprints and strategies must be developed and executed to address a health organisation’s business, administrative, and clinical processes which is challenging to update and maintain due to the myriad of software and hardware making up complex IT systems.

2- Cybersecurity

With hospitals’ IT systems aiming to become more connected, they are increasingly becoming vulnerable to large scale ransomware attacks and data breaches. This makes it a challenge for IT leaders to ensure patient data is securely stored and exchanged while maintaining privacy.

As healthcare continues to digitise with new software and hardware connecting to existing hospital IT frameworks, issues around on-premise versus cloud data storage are becoming increasingly more relevant. On-premise storage is thought to provide the highest level of security but is more costly while the cloud is typically more affordable but is less secure. As a result, some healthcare organisations are opting for a hybrid mix of the two. Any approach to data storage has its pros and cons and is an important consideration for any CIO making decisions about which vendor’s software or hardware to integrate into their network.

CIOs face a constant battle to safeguard patient data from cyber attacks and must continually invest in robust cybersecurity measures along with monitoring and training staff to ensure they follow protocols to protect sensitive patient information.

3- Regulatory Compliance

With everchanging healthcare regulations across different countries, adapting to new compliance standards while ensuring their organisations adhere to legal requirements is an ongoing challenge for healthcare IT leaders. Regulatory compliance spans a vast array of areas from data protection and privacy to cybersecurity.

Before procuring any new software tool, hardware, or making changes to current IT networks, regular audits are required for compliance purposes. CIOs are directly responsible for implementing and maintaining data governance practices, including security measures, along with compliance frameworks that protect sensitive data and mitigate risks.

In their roles, CIOs must work closely with other stakeholders including legal, compliance, and risk management teams to conduct regular audits and ensure a comprehensive and proactive approach. But ensuring compliance across disparate systems and processes is a constant challenge across hospitals and health systems with complex IT infrastructures.

4- Healthcare AI and Machine Learning

With the explosive market growth of healthcare AI and Machine Learning (ML) solutions aimed at improving operational efficiency and enhancing patient outcomes through advanced diagnostics and treatments, hospital IT leaders must stay up to date on the latest AI advancements.

However, implementing any AI tools within an organisation requires significant investment in technological infrastructure, staff training, and regulatory compliance. It also requires patients and healthcare providers to accept and trust new AI solutions which have been fully tested or evaluated.

AI is an integral part of the digital revolution happening now and CIOs cannot ignore it, especially when they are constantly bombarded by both established companies and recent start-ups seeking these leaders’ attention to demo, trial, and contract their AI solutions. This requires CIOs to develop a comprehensive understanding of emerging technologies to assess the potential impact on clinical and operational efficiencies.

5- Budget Constraints

Health IT leaders and CIOs face ongoing challenges due to regular budget constraints forcing them to balance digital innovation with managing costs. For example, a health system that is building a digital front door may then lack the resources to also invest in the latest generative AI solutions to improve efficiencies. While both projects are equally important to enhance digitisation, only one can be undertaken at a time, slowing down the digital transformation process.

As important stakeholders and decision-makers around the procurement of new software and hardware, navigating budget limits and shortfalls is a constant struggle for CIOs. They are forced to make strategic decisions about cost allocations to ensure investments are directed towards initiatives that actually improve patient care. However, this is not always easy to measure or track in terms of key performance indicators (KPIs) or return on investments (ROIs).

The road ahead…

CIOs are at the forefront of transforming healthcare through technology. By addressing challenges head-on that relate to interoperability, cybersecurity, regulatory compliance, AI and ML, and budget constraints, these leaders can guide their organisations into a future where patient care is accessible, effective, and secure.

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About The Author

Rohinee Lal leads the Custom Research & Consultancy ‘Voice of the Customer’ team focused on conducting bespoke market research with healthcare providers and professionals. She has decades of experience collecting, analysing and presenting market intelligence insights across a range of industries including pharma, digital health, health IT, imaging, AI, and medical devices.

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The Decision-maker research services team provides first-hand primary market research on the voice of the customer using a wide range of qualitative and/or quantitative research methods. The team works on custom projects across Signify Research’s entire health technology portfolio including Healthcare IT, Medical Imaging, Clinical Care, Digital Health, and Diagnostics and Lifesciences. The team specialises in helping clients learn more about the purchasing journey of healthcare decision-makers and end-users to understand the specific needs of potential customers, including illuminating key factors that drive purchasing decisions from both buyer and end-user perspectives. Our unique approach blends customer insight with our syndicated market intelligence data to provide valuable market insights for our clients that includes a holistic analysis and overview of the competitor, buyer, end-user, and ecosystem perspectives.

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