This week the annual HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) conference will commence in Orlando, Florida. This annual gathering in particular is the one event that truly connects the present and future landscape of the Healthcare Technology Management industry. Yes, many will debate my statement and yes, there are several other great supporting conferences that contribute, but it is true. Medical devices as we know them today and into the future either do or will integrate into some IT network infrastructure. Their data communication travels will be endless.
So let me bring us back to the title of this week’s blog, “Is it CE-IT or IT-CE?”. This connection or collaboration is still a struggle for many of our tenured HTM professionals. You know what I mean, “us versus them”. Ah yes, Biomed vs IT. The finger pointing of who owns the problem that comes in through the biomed dispatch center or IT help desk from the clinical user. You have all heard it and maybe even said it yourselves “that’s not our – it theirs”. All the while the clinical user who placed the call for service sits out there getting frustrated having to experience this ping-pong match between these two support groups. Aha, wait a minute maybe the connection has been there the whole time and neither group has really understood it. Let’s look at this as an equation, the constant could be the clinical customer, I mean they are one’s seeking service assistance from one or both of these two support groups. The variable then would be the two support groups (CE-IT or IT-CE) the clinical customer is reaching out to for help.
So if these two support groups could work together or collaborate as one now wouldn’t that make it much easier for the clinical customer to get the help they are so desperately seeking? Just think of the efficiencies that could occur and ultimately best serve the healthcare communities customer’s, you know- the patients.
Well, I have laid out some pretty heavy thoughts but reality is settling in as this is the new HTM paradigm. CE-IT or IT-CE is the new modeling structure and function of the Healthcare Technology
Management industry. Whichever side of the back yard fence you have comfortably resided on all of these years a landscape change is occurring. All of the yards will now blend into each other and the grass will no longer need to be trimmed around the fence that once separated these two support groups. The fence will be forever gone.