HDO CIOs: Leaders in the Digital Health revolution

A CIO in the context of a Healthcare Delivery Organization (HDO) is one of the decisionmakers who more contributes to improving the experience of health professionals and
customers, ensuring that the processes of communication and interaction across the
continuum of care, are run with efficiency and fluidity.
Health care and technology go hand in hand in improving the quality of life of the people. In
the coming years we will be able to predict the likelihood of a person having a particular
disease in the future or if in the next few hours could suffer a heart attack or a stroke. With the
mapping of the human genome, the drugs personalization, the monitoring of individual health
parameters, collected by IoT wearables or ingestables and automatic analysis of patterns,
health professionals will be able to act preventively in life-threatening situations, to what we
might call predictive medicine and health systems in real time.
We go from a reactive attitude to a predictive attitude, in which we use health services when
we are told by health professionals that there are positive markers or trends in our biometric
data that can be of concern. With telemedicine the same professionals can reduce barriers of
time and distance, get faster to the customers, acting in proactive way, in a Accountable Care
model.
All these evolutions begin to be part of our days, being information technology (IT) one of its
strongest foundations. In fact, in recent decades, with the evolution of Hospital Information
Systems (HIS) and Electronic Medical Records (EMR), the sector was very oriented to data
collection.

Advances in health represent one thing: data, data and more

data, or, in a more pompous way, BIGDATA & ANALYTICS.
Despite the health sector being one of the most fascinating areas in innovation, it is also an
area very resistant to change, especially with regard to the adoption of information systems by
health professionals. This resistance is not the only responsible, but also by the inability of "IT"
to understand the needs of these professionals and the essence of the business. CIOs must be
the catalysts of change, helping to break down many of the barriers that exist.
IT professionals in the context of HDO, went from mere receivers of requests to connoisseurs
of all functional areas. Medical equipment tend to be fully integrated with the HIS, through IP
connectivity and wireless, using protocols and standards such as HL7 and DICOM. Mobility and
mobile devices are already common and tend to be dominants.
The role of the CIO is very important to the success of a HDO, so it is normal now and
increasingly in the future, to find these professionals at the top of the decision-making
structures. In addition to the extensive knowledge of systems and medical equipment, and
also skills as facilitator and Communicator, the HDO CIO must understand the needs of
professionals, be close to the customers, meet the business and understand its essence. Only
in this way can add value across the line of health care delivery .
This article was written by Manuel Monteiro, CIO of the Year in Portugal, CIONET Advisory
Board Member, Consultant in Hospital Information Systems & Hospital Manager