Today, more than ever, healthcare professionals need to stay on top of IT trends. This year, HCI asked you, our readers, to vote for the top tech trends of the past year. In Top Tech Trends, page 22, our annual roundup of the top trends facing healthcare CIOs today, we highlight the areas that our readers feel will be important as they try and move their organizations ever further into the digital age. It's a roadmap produced after much deliberation and research—and a desktop companion for the entire year.
Under pressure to fundamentally alter the cost/quality paradigm, hospital organizations are turning to IT as a must-have change facilitator. In our first Tech Trend story, Clinical Transformation, page 24, we show you why intensifying reimbursement changes, legislative and regulatory mandates, and the demand on the part of purchasers and payers for a fundamental transformation in healthcare quality and patient safety will be agenda item number one for hospital organizations in the years to come. We also look at how, increasingly, C-suite executives and boards are realizing that clinical transformation is not truly possible without IT.
Today, more CIOs are becoming aware that just having a lot of data doesn't mean much, especially if the data is of questionable quality. As such, the Data Integrity issue has come front and center. In our Tech Trend story on the subject, page 38, see how some CIOs are facing the issue, not as an insurmountable problem, but as part of their strategic vision of quality.
Healthcare Informatics 2009 February;25(14):10
