IT-as-a-Service to Save $11 Billion in Health IT

According to a report by MeriTalk, IT as a service (ITaaS) can save $11 billion to health care organizations or 9 percent, of their costs over the next three years.

ITaaS, a combination of software as a service, platform as a service and infrastructure as a service, The results of its new report, “Health Check: Healthcare CIOs Prescribe Change,” based on a survey of College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) and underwritten by EMC Corporation found that ITaaS model can be used to lower operational costs including capital to operational expenditure, boost service levels and streamline application deployment.

An ITaaS framework enables providers to support the pace of change and organizational transformation to meet accountable care goals. As IT departments transform their operations to run IT as a service, their role will also transform – from exclusive providers of IT services to brokers of IT services. This shared services infrastructure offers healthcare organizations the opportunity to lower operational costs, restructure costs from capital to operating expenses, improve service levels, and accelerates the deployment of key healthcare applications, says the report.

While 90 percent of CIOs view IT innovation as critical to success, 47 percent of healthcare respondents said their existing IT portfolio can be extended to deliver ITaaS-style private, hybrid, or public clouds models. As IT departments transform their operations to run IT as a service, their role will also transform, from exclusive providers of IT services to brokers of IT services. An ITaaS framework enables providers to support the pace of change and organizational transformation to meet accountable care goals.

The report further said that 87 percent are deploying virtualization, 48 percent are centralizing IT management, 73 percent are streamlining IT operations and only 30 percent use a structured process to measure IT return on investment. MeriTalk noted in the report that 52 percent are having trouble finding and hiring skilled workers, and only 30 percent are using a structured process to measure IT return on investment. Demand from large projects like EHR, accountable care, unified security and end user BYOD are requiring IT to be responsive and to be able to innovate.

Big data plays a major role creating health care applications. In Rick Smolan’s book, The Human Face of Big Data, he reported that 27% of internet enthusiasts have started monitoring their health by seeking online information about health symptoms and indicators. Because of this, developers are now continuously introducing big data applications to monitor and track health related issues.

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