Instilling a tradition of resiliency in a company could also be its most essential defence amid a disaster.
That’s in keeping with Kristin Myers, govt vp, chief info officer and dean for info expertise at Mount Sinai Well being System, who noticed firsthand how essential it was to have agile groups through the top of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Final April when New York Metropolis grew to become the epicenter of the pandemic, Mount Sinai Well being System discovered itself overwhelmed. Like different organizations within the metropolis, the well being system needed to adapt rapidly, and IT performed a key function in that course of. However relatively than change Myer’s priorities as CIO, the Covid-19 pandemic reaffirmed them.
In a wide-ranging electronic mail interview, Myers mentioned her IT priorities, targets for the 12 months forward and the expertise answer that was invaluable for her in 2020. Spoiler alert: It’s not Zoom.
Be aware: Responses have been frivolously edited for size and readability.
Query: How has the Covid-19 pandemic affected your view of what to prioritize as an IT chief?
Kristin Myers: Although Covid-19 has considerably impacted our well being system, it has not modified my view of the important thing IT priorities. As an alternative, it has additional heightened and accelerated the necessity to drive ahead my key priorities of digital transformation, information and analytics enablement, and price optimization.
The enlargement of telehealth and digital instruments was very obvious through the pandemic, the place digital visits exploded from about 20 to round 4,000 visits a day. Analysis groups additionally wanted to rapidly entry and analyze information to fast-track new types of Covid testing and coverings.
The monetary impression of Covid-19 has elevated our concentrate on price optimization, main us to conduct a deep evaluation of operations, together with contract renegotiation/cancellation, utility portfolio rationalization, contractors, and so forth. IT will consider these areas as excessive precedence to proceed supporting Covid-19 efforts.
Query: What was a key lesson you realized in 2020 that you’ll take into 2021?
Kristin Myers: The one factor that actually stood out to me in 2020 was the significance of tradition within the group. I’ll make investments extra time and vitality into driving IT in the direction of a cultural transformation of resiliency and innovation. A tradition of resiliency is being agile and having the ability to adapt rapidly to alter. A tradition of innovation is establishing a piece setting that fosters innovation, artistic pondering and collaboration.
Having a company [be] each resilient and modern will allow [it] to remodel itself rapidly to attain scientific, enterprise and expertise goals. My purpose is to instill and combine this resilient and modern tradition into the group the place it turns into a part of day-to-day operations.
Query: What was one piece of expertise that was invaluable for you prior to now 12 months?
Kristin Myers: With the sudden shift to a distant workforce because of Covid-19, it rapidly grew to become clear that communications was the important thing to making sure continued operations and collaboration. We closely utilized a number of technique of communication, with Microsoft Groups being one of many main inner communication instruments. The Microsoft Groups platform serves as our enterprise collaboration platform and supplies chat performance, name performance and joint collaboration on documentation. The utilization and worth we derive from Microsoft Groups has continued to extend.
Query: What are your fundamental targets for the 12 months forward?
Kristin Myers: My fundamental targets for 2021 could be to concentrate on scientific assist, operational optimization and price discount initiatives. From a scientific assist perspective, IT continues to be a key enabler for our clinicians, educators and researchers. With our prime precedence being Covid-19 response and assist, we additionally will proceed the digital transformation for our group and sufferers, and drive in the direction of a data-driven group via the execution of our enterprise information technique.
We will even look to optimize our IT operations via automation, organizational realignment, cloud journey and repair supply optimization.
Lastly, price optimization continues to be a key theme with a concentrate on our contracts, utility portfolio rationalization and sourcing technique.
Query: What impression do you anticipate the brand new administration to have on well being IT coverage? Any predictions for the subsequent 4 years?
Kristin Myers: The brand new administration will certainly have a major impression on well being IT insurance policies, particularly with regard to Covid-19 within the quick time period and reworking the healthcare system in the long term. The preliminary precedence could be round leveraging expertise to assist assist Covid-19 efforts and expedite the supply of Covid-19 vaccines.
Within the subsequent few years, I anticipate continued concentrate on telehealth and distant affected person monitoring instruments and providers, enlargement of interoperability and well being information change, elevated cybersecurity protection for healthcare information, machine studying and synthetic intelligence, and continued promotion of healthcare expertise innovation.
Photograph: Mount Sinai Well being System