“Security now has to be a part of that conversation, and it can’t be a bolt-on of many tools. It has to be seamless and ingrained into what’s being delivered,” Logan said. “It has to be part of the conversation right up front. It’s no longer a nice-to-have — it’s a necessity.”
For healthcare systems moving toward an “anywhere-care environment,” Logan said that involves putting patient information in the hands of providers using their devices of choice, and giving them flexibility and a seamless, consistent, high-quality experience that will open the floodgates for delivering the same type of experience to patients.
Logan said it’s also imperative that organizations secure the “distributed edge” as providers reach patients outside hospital walls.
“The edge of my network can be anywhere; it can be based on workload, it can be based upon an identity, it can be based upon the device itself, so easing the movement of this concept of zero trust, really ingraining security into the fabric of the DNA of the platform itself,” Logan said.
3. Keeping the Momentum for Innovation
IBM healthcare experts spoke during a digital session about the opportunity the healthcare industry faces to scale new norms and ensure continued resiliency. CTO Ryan Hodgin and global transformation leader Kate Huey, both with IBM’s Healthcare and Life Sciences practice, discussed the need for a culture shift in digital transformation and avoiding the status quo.
“We saw things that would’ve taken us months and years that we really pulled off in days and weeks,” Huey said. “It’s been phenomenal to see that things that had really not been accepted, within 18 months we had up and running and accepted not only by our users but also by our clinicians.”
Although the pandemic highlighted gaps in health equity, Huey said digital health solutions will play a role in lessening that gulf. “We absolutely need to keep up the momentum and innovation that we’ve seen over the last 18 months,” she said.
However, there needs to be a culture change in digital transformations, and she highlighted that a large percentage of projects fail because of a lack of user acceptance.
MORE FROM HIMSS21: Healthcare executives share digital health lessons learned.
“We need to be looking at how we take transformation that really drives innovation, that allows our healthcare folks to have data at their fingertips so they can really make decisions and drive action in ways that they couldn’t previously,” she said.
As an example, Cleveland Clinic and IBM announced earlier this year a long-term partnership for quantum computing. “Technologies that used to be science experiments are now actually coming to life, and they’re driving innovation,” Huey said, citing AI-infused technology, quantum computing and blockchain.
As healthcare organizations review their digital transformations and set themselves on a path to success, Huey said it would help to see these changes happening as an active partnership rather than “happening to you.”
“If we don’t have trust on all sides, then the transformation will fail as well,” Huey said.
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