HIMSS

The ITN team has just returned from the Healthcare Information and Management Society’s (HIMSS15) annual conference in Chicago, where more than 43,000 healthcare IT professionals gathered to learn about and share information on optimizing healthcare outcomes using information technology. 

In the healthcare organization of today, picture archive and communication systems (PACS) are a mainstay. Introduced to the healthcare world in the early 1990s, these systems have given providers a solution for storing, viewing and sharing patients’ medical images. In recent years electronic medical records (EMRs) and other health information systems have also gained popularity for storing and transmitting patients’ healthcare information. These systems, for the most part, have been specific to each hospital, practice and even department. As healthcare becomes more interactive and connected, with a focus on efficiency, healthcare organizations around the country are investing in ways to make these systems interoperable within the facility and across the enterprise.

The high demand for qualified health IT professionals continues, as revealed in the 2014 HIMSS Workplace Study, conducted by HIMSS Analytics. The study shows more than 84 percent of survey respondents reported their organization hired at least one staff member in the past year, a finding consistent with the 2013 survey (86 percent). With hiring in 2014 expected to continue at the 2013 pace, 82 percent of survey respondents planned to hire at least one full-time employee (FTE) in the next 12 months, a slight increase from the 79 percent of respondents planning the same in 2013.

Bed management, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and financial modeling applications are positioned for accelerated growth among hospitals, according to data from the “HIMSS Analytics Essentials of the U.S. Hospital IT Market, Spring 2014 Edition.”

The 25th Annual 2014 HIMSS Leadership Survey examines topics crucial to healthcare leaders including IT priorities, issues driving and challenging technology adoption and IT security. One finding from this year’s survey concerns the perceived impact financial resources are having on IT implementations. A majority of the survey participants (65 percent) reported IT budget increases, which is likely a contributing factor to the transition to a paperless environment. However, a lack of adequate financial resources tops the list of barriers to successful IT implementation. This is a shift from the past two years when the primary IT challenge was insufficient and untrained staffing resources.