With all of the IT challenges within the health-care industry today, IT executives are looking for a little piece of sanity that a good vendor could provide them. Miguel Llopiz, vice president of the health-care sector at Mimecast, finds it remarkable how health-care CIOs handle all of their day-to-day responsibilities while still finding time and resources for innovation. Mimecast’s goal is to take some of the pain, and cost, away from these IT executives from cloud to email environments.
HCITS: How does Mimecast cater to health-care payer and provider IT executives? What are you doing in the health-care space?
Llopiz: Mimecast brings to bear a very powerful mix of capabilities aimed at distinct value propositions—compliancy and collaboration—while leveraging the cloud to attain much lower costs. We provide a cloud-based service that delivers collaborative HIPAA security and privacy, and compliance enablers that enhance the current mail platform, while reducing complexity and costs. We expand the capabilities that the current email system delivers while driving huge efficiencies in the IT organization. It completely aligns with health-care initiatives to drive costs down while delivering better service.
HCITS: Are there any new products or services that you would like to share with our audience?
Llopiz: We have spent a lot of time speaking to our current health-care customers as well as prospective clients, thus, have been able to align our existing suite of cloud-based services to their individual requirements. Additionally, we have learned that many are using either an inefficient mix of independent products or using such products in a manner for which they were not intended. Either way spells deficiencies and skyrocketing costs. What we are doing is delivering a unified approach to email management, where customers can leverage investments or consolidate disparate applications at much reduced cost and complexity.
HCITS: Do you have a specific example of this unified approach?
Llopiz: Our mobility products and services allow for BYOD deployment and bring 100 percent continual access to email, and archive for the mobile health-care worker. Even better, it does this seamlessly and inexpensively. Of the many new capabilities we are delivering, I am excited about our MSO4 (Mimecast Services for Outlook), which tightly integrate with the user interface and deliver contextual “on demand” retention, security and privacy policies. This allows IT to manage the compliance burden through good procedural mechanics. In addition, we are investing in some revolutionary technologies that provide high-level analytics that extract particular insights from our archive. In the future, we can shape these tools to the specific needs of not only our health-care clients, but also address custom requirements for many of our customers.
HCITS: How does Mimecast help health-care IT executives stay ahead of the curve in the health-care industry today?
Llopiz: This is very basic: We take the pain and cost of managing their email environment, thus liberating IT staff to direct their attention to the many other areas and initiatives that they have to support—again, doing more with fewer headaches. Our mantra includes our five Cs of IT: reducing cost and complexity while offering compliant and continuous collaboration.
HCITS: What is the biggest IT trend that you are seeing in the health-care industry today, and how are you addressing that trend?
Llopiz: IT executives are burdened with a tremendous amount of responsibilities, applications to support and initiatives to manage. Frankly, I don’t know how some of these folks do it! They have less budget, time and resources at their disposal. This presents a unique scenario in that they are also being asked to maintain an increasing portfolio of services, compliance initiatives, resources, applications, thus, vendor relationships. The challenges are great and the solutions are many, but the real efficiency is in ensuring these solutions address real concerns and not become shelf-ware. Our customers are looking for ways to leverage the cloud and bring about cost effectiveness and simplicity, and most offerings come in an all-or-nothing format. What we can provision are ways for them to leverage the efficiencies cloud technologies can potentially deliver, but not have to face the mountainous challenges in bringing these technologies to full use in a short time period. We can activate our services in days for incredibly low costs.
HCITS: What will Mimecast be presenting at the Healthcare IT Summit?
Llopiz: We will be showcasing success stories from our broad customer base and introducing new products and enhancements, as well as new partnerships that will please current and future clients.
Showing posts with label Vendor Spotlight. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vendor Spotlight. Show all posts
LogiXML Will Release New Version of Its Product In Early November
The health-care industry is under more pressure than almost any other industry. Its environment is changing faster than most in respect to what health-care IT executives have to do with their data. Ken Chow, chief marketing officer of LogiXML, believes that LogiXML’s health-care dashboards, reporting and analytics tools enable IT executives in this space to adapt to the rapidly changing industry landscape. In this interview, Chow discusses LogiXML’s newest version of its product, which will be released jsut in time for the Healthcare IT Summit in November, what they will be showing at the conference and how they are catering to the health-care CIO audience.
HCITS: How does LogiXML cater to health-care payer and provider IT executives? What are you doing in the health-care space?
Chow: We provide a way of producing the analytics and reporting health-care CIOs need across multiple disparate databases. Typically, the two main drivers of their concern are speed and having fragmented data sources; our solution addresses these issues as it provides a web-based platform that adapts to the changing health-care environment quickly and in an organized manner. The only other major way in which I think we are really outstanding in that area is that we provide a fine level of security, which I think is important for all health-care IT executives.
HCITS: Are there any new products or services that you would like to share with our audience?
Chow: This year, in early November, we are going to have a major release of a new product coming out that provides even more intuitive and easy-to-use interfaces and visuals. I think that’s important, because many health-care payer and provider institutions are delivering metrics that need to be interpreted on-the-fly both quickly and easily, so we are just making the whole visual impression even better. We plan to show it off at the Healthcare IT Summit.
HCITS: How does LogiXML help health-care IT executives stay ahead of the curve in the health-care industry today?
Chow: These individuals are certainly being thrown a lot of curveballs both from the regulatory arena as well as the increased competitive environment they are in. So, we give them a way of reacting more quickly. The same agility I spoke of in the first questions—the ability to get to multiple databases, get to them securely, and to really quickly make and change the views of the things they are looking at—is how we help them stay ahead. They know this industry and they are having a difficult enough time predicting these trends. They need to adapt and change the way they adapt and change to their data really quickly in order to stay ahead.
HCITS: What is the biggest IT trend you are seeing in the health-care industry today, and how are you addressing that trend?
Chow: The single biggest trend would be about cost control and reimbursement, and much of that has come by way of the change in the regulatory environment as well as the industry structures that have arisen to handle it. Things like the notion of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), and so forth, have changed the landscape of how both payer and provider institutions have to look at their data. If they are going to adapt to these new systems, particularly the new Medicaid and Medicare programs, they are going to have to really stay on top of that data. Cost control and reimbursement is probably one of the pain points—it certainly doesn’t take a back seat to patient care, which has always been a priority—but, cost control and reimbursement is the fastest-growing trend today.
HCITS: Please share a customer example of your success in this space.
Chow: NACHRI (the National Association of Children’s Hospitals and Related Institutions), which recently merged with CHCA and is now together known as the Children’s Hospital Association, use our product’s portal to allow all of their members to compare their operational metrics to their peers. They are able to help their members operate efficiently and make sure their memberships are as cost-efficient as possible by benchmarking, sharing and collaborating on best practices.
In contrast, Partners In Health has actually instituted our product to deliver patient care and direct patient metrics onto the floor of the care institutions so that the hospital staff, nursing staff, doctors and administrators can quickly take a look at care statistics and available resources to match the care needs. These are just two examples of the types of things that we do and offer.
HCITS: What will LogiXML be presenting at the Healthcare IT Summit?
Chow: We will be showing off the newest version of our product with some very compelling visuals, as l mentioned earlier. I think the main “aha” moment that most of the IT executives will have with our technology will be when they see how fast it is, how easy it is to hook it up to all of their data and the level of role-based security that it provides. The main thrust of the product will happen at the Healthcare IT Summit—we will be talking about the new enhancements and the release so we are really excited for the conference.
HCITS: How does LogiXML cater to health-care payer and provider IT executives? What are you doing in the health-care space?
Chow: We provide a way of producing the analytics and reporting health-care CIOs need across multiple disparate databases. Typically, the two main drivers of their concern are speed and having fragmented data sources; our solution addresses these issues as it provides a web-based platform that adapts to the changing health-care environment quickly and in an organized manner. The only other major way in which I think we are really outstanding in that area is that we provide a fine level of security, which I think is important for all health-care IT executives.
HCITS: Are there any new products or services that you would like to share with our audience?
Chow: This year, in early November, we are going to have a major release of a new product coming out that provides even more intuitive and easy-to-use interfaces and visuals. I think that’s important, because many health-care payer and provider institutions are delivering metrics that need to be interpreted on-the-fly both quickly and easily, so we are just making the whole visual impression even better. We plan to show it off at the Healthcare IT Summit.
HCITS: How does LogiXML help health-care IT executives stay ahead of the curve in the health-care industry today?
Chow: These individuals are certainly being thrown a lot of curveballs both from the regulatory arena as well as the increased competitive environment they are in. So, we give them a way of reacting more quickly. The same agility I spoke of in the first questions—the ability to get to multiple databases, get to them securely, and to really quickly make and change the views of the things they are looking at—is how we help them stay ahead. They know this industry and they are having a difficult enough time predicting these trends. They need to adapt and change the way they adapt and change to their data really quickly in order to stay ahead.
HCITS: What is the biggest IT trend you are seeing in the health-care industry today, and how are you addressing that trend?
Chow: The single biggest trend would be about cost control and reimbursement, and much of that has come by way of the change in the regulatory environment as well as the industry structures that have arisen to handle it. Things like the notion of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), and so forth, have changed the landscape of how both payer and provider institutions have to look at their data. If they are going to adapt to these new systems, particularly the new Medicaid and Medicare programs, they are going to have to really stay on top of that data. Cost control and reimbursement is probably one of the pain points—it certainly doesn’t take a back seat to patient care, which has always been a priority—but, cost control and reimbursement is the fastest-growing trend today.
HCITS: Please share a customer example of your success in this space.
Chow: NACHRI (the National Association of Children’s Hospitals and Related Institutions), which recently merged with CHCA and is now together known as the Children’s Hospital Association, use our product’s portal to allow all of their members to compare their operational metrics to their peers. They are able to help their members operate efficiently and make sure their memberships are as cost-efficient as possible by benchmarking, sharing and collaborating on best practices.
In contrast, Partners In Health has actually instituted our product to deliver patient care and direct patient metrics onto the floor of the care institutions so that the hospital staff, nursing staff, doctors and administrators can quickly take a look at care statistics and available resources to match the care needs. These are just two examples of the types of things that we do and offer.
HCITS: What will LogiXML be presenting at the Healthcare IT Summit?
Chow: We will be showing off the newest version of our product with some very compelling visuals, as l mentioned earlier. I think the main “aha” moment that most of the IT executives will have with our technology will be when they see how fast it is, how easy it is to hook it up to all of their data and the level of role-based security that it provides. The main thrust of the product will happen at the Healthcare IT Summit—we will be talking about the new enhancements and the release so we are really excited for the conference.
Vendor Spotlight: Control Your IT Spending With NPI
How do you implement compliance solutions without severely impacting your IT budget? How do you know if you’re spending too much? What are the common mistakes made in the IT purchasing process? Jon Winsett, CEO of NPI Financial, answers those questions and more. NPI provides spending management consulting services and helps companies reduce IT costs while organizing their IT budgets.
HCITS: What are you doing to help healthcare CIOs control IT costs?
Winsett: IT spend management in the healthcare industry is critical—more so than it’s ever been before. Compliance pressure is causing the industry to buy new solutions that many CIOs have little experience in purchasing—EMRs, HIE, etc.—and these new applications are, in turn, driving infrastructure upgrades—in some cases, unanticipated and rushed. The conditions are ripe for overspending.
NPI reviews thousands of IT purchases each year. We have benchmark data that enables us to determine what’s a fair price and what isn’t. Because we’re intimately familiar with vendors’ behavior and contracting tactics, we know how to optimize the contracting process for the buyer. All of this knowledge typically translates into a 20 to 30 percent reduction in an IT purchase price.
HCITS: Given the nature of your business, what is your relationship with healthcare IT vendors?
Winsett: Our responsibility is to protect our clients from overspending, but that doesn’t mean we’re ‘anti-vendor.’ In fact, we take great care to respect our clients’ vendor relationships. When we advise healthcare CIOs through the purchasing and contracting process, we make sure that we’re creating a win-win for everyone. It’s not in our clients’ best interest for their IT vendor not to be successful. We just want to make sure pricing, terms and conditions are fair. Because of that, NPI has earned the respect of IT vendors.
HCITS: How prevalent is IT overspending in healthcare?
Winsett: Extremely. NPI has found that healthcare organizations typically pay 20 percent too much for the average hardware, software and telecom purchase. For a large McKesson implementation or Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, the difference can be in the seven figures. That savings can fund other initiatives, preserve jobs or go straight to the bottom line.
HCITS: What reaction do you get from CIOs when you tell them they’re paying too much?
Winsett: Most healthcare CIOs are diligent in the IT purchasing process so they’re surprised to learn the extent to which they’re overpaying. We have to remind them that this isn’t due to sourcing or IT’s oversight. The average IT or sourcing department only sees a handful of new, large-scale purchases each year. We see thousands. With that comes real-time, objective pricing and contracting insight that they could not possibly acquire on their own. We arm our clients’ sourcing professionals with data and vendor-specific expertise that makes them more effective.
HCITS: In your experience, what is the single most common mistake made in the technology purchasing process?
Winsett: The biggest mistake is not benchmarking pricing for their existing vendors. Healthcare companies are deeply entrenched in their incumbent vendor relationships. They don’t often take the time to compare Microsoft’s pricing against an alternative solution because they could never imagine leaving Microsoft. If they did, they would realize that they could gain leverage that would help them negotiate down their licensing agreements and improve their incentives and discounts.
Another mistake is buying bundled offerings. At NPI, we like to tell our healthcare CIOs to “beware of the bundle.” Oftentimes, it’s a slippery slope that leads to buying more product/service than you actually need.
HCITS: Where will healthcare CIOs overspend the most in 2012?
Winsett: NPI has identified seven IT purchases that are ripe for overspending in the coming year:
1) Coding and billing Systems
2) EHR/EMR
3) Storage and archiving
4) Business intelligence
5) Security
6) Ethernet
7) High availability
In nearly all of these areas, there is a major compliance or business driver that is increasing demand for these solutions—which, in turn, gives vendors more leverage in pricing and terms.
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