Q&A With Todd Park, U.S. CTO

Federal Chief Technology Officer Todd Park has a vision for changing the way American citizens interact with technology. We had an opportunity to discuss those initiatives with Park, who was appointed Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in 2009. Prior to joining HHS, Park co-founded Athenahealth and co-led its development into one of the most innovative health IT companies in the industry. Many of our questions came from XChange Events advisory board members.

Q: Please tell us about the digital government strategy—how will it help the American people, and what you are doing to drive that strategy forward?

Park: U.S. CIO Steve VanRoekel and I rolled out the digital government strategy in May, which seeks to do three things:

1. Put government at citizens’ fingertips and literally bring government to mobile devices, and any device in general, that citizens are using.
2. Buy technology in a certain way that gives bigger bang for the taxpayer buck.
3. Move even more energetically and strongly in the direction of open data.

Q: Why is it important to make government data open and machine-readable?

Park: This is important because if you open up the data and make it machine-readable, it becomes easier able to power innovative digital government services. And, even more importantly, it opens the data in usable form so that all of the other “smart people” in the world—developers, innovators and entrepreneurs—can take our data and turn it into magic. They can turn it into new products or services that can improve American lives, help grow our economy and create jobs.

Q: What is one of the key initiatives that you are pursuing to catapult the digital government strategy forward?

Park: One of the key initiatives that is driving the digital government strategy forward is the open data initiatives program. This program seeks to not just liberate government data in machine-readable form, but also catalyze the development of an ecosystem of innovation that utilizes that data and educate innovators and entrepreneurs about that data. Through a series of meet-ups, code-a-thons and datapaloozas, we are able to celebrate the wide range of innovations that people are already pursuing.

Q: What is the Presidential Innovation Fellows program? How will it impact the state of our health care industry and the American government as a whole?

Park: The Presidential Innovation Fellows program is a program that we launched simultaneous with the digital government strategy. It’s a program that aims to bring together the amazing innovators from outside the government and the best innovators inside government. We then create agile teams that aim to deliver game-changing solutions in six months.

Q: At what point does the federal government start leveraging this country’s IT infrastructure and talent as opposed to developing its own?

Park: I think that moment is now. The central thrust of our approach with open data initiatives and the digital government strategy is that we shouldn’t build the tools that should be useful to citizens ourselves; we should open up that data so innovators outside of government can leverage our data to build useful services and applications with their infrastructure, technology, ingenuity and people.

So if we want to maximize the social return on taxpayer investment in government data, we know that we can’t just have the government build tools on it, but instead have everyone else build tools on the data to help the public.

Q: What’s your plan to deal with “Policy Lag” where the current federal policies have not kept up with the advancement of technology?

Park: Initiatives like the digital government strategy can close that gap dramatically.  If you think about the implications of a move like open data, what we’re doing is future-proofing the U.S. government from a technology standpoint because we are saying, “we are going to open up our data and when the world evolves, it will utilize that data in a number of ways.” It allows our data to evolve and advance at the same speed that technology is advancing.

Q: Small businesses continue to struggle to get a fair share of the federal government IT pie. What are some actions the federal government is taking to enhance SMB opportunities?

Park: RFP-EZ.  One of the features of the Presidential Innovation Fellows program is that it is both bringing in 20 people to be literal fellows, and it also is an opportunity for others to engage as well. You can sign up and provide input from wherever you are. We are looking for folks to join the networks to provide support and ideas to each of the projects. It gives small businesses, and anyone else, the opportunity to provide input and insight. To sign up you can go to white.gov/innovationfellows.

Q: If you could give our diverse IT executive audience one piece of advice, what would it be?

Park: There is immense innovation talent locked in your organization and the most important thing you can do as an innovation or IT leader is to unleash that talent and unleash that mojo. Embrace the power of the lean start-up approach to change management (an idea first established by Eric Ries). The final piece of advice is to embrace the power of open innovation and to embrace the idea of Joy’s law. It is to recognize that if you came up with lots of other people to get something done, you will actually deliver much better results, much faster with a much lower cost than if you try to do it all yourself. 

Q: What is the day in the life of Todd Park as the CTO of the U.S.?

Park: Crazy and wonderful! About 80 percent of my time is spent functioning as the virtual CEO and leader of a set of high-priority initiatives and projects that I am responsible for leading the execution of, and delivering results. The other 20 percent of my time is being a senior adviser that provides council and ideas and other kinds of assistance on issues as they arise. 

Healthcare IT Guy On How To Get Started in Healthcare IT

Health Administration Degrees shared with us an interview they recently conducted with Shahid Shah, also known as the Healthcare IT Guy in his popular blog.


In the interview, Shah discusses how to get started in healthcare IT as well as how consumer technologies, like smart phones and tablets, are affecting this industry.


You can find the interview on their homepage. In their video player, simply choose this interview on the right-hand sidebar. Enjoy!

D.C. Bound For Health Datapalooza Event

Mr. Healthcare CIO will be at the upcoming Health Datapalooza (HDI Forum III) event in Washington D.C. next week--if you see me there, please say hello! I am always interested in making new industry connections, finding speakers for our Healthcare IT Summit and other XChange events, finding industry bloggers and writers to contribute to our Healthcare IT Strategies newsletter and, most importantly, to make new friends!


I am greatly looking forward to the unbelievable line-up that the HDI Forum team has graciously planned--the event is going to be jam-packed with industry leaders, IT executives, CIOs, CMOs, doctors, Gartner analysts and more. And, to top it all off, Jon Bon Jovi will be there! LOOK WHO'S COMING


Todd Park, U.S. CTO, will be giving the opening keynote address on Tuesday, June 5 at 9:10 AM...see his blog post on The Health Care Blog about the event. 


I am so excited to have the opportunity to attend this event and am looking forward to getting some great coverage while learning from these extraordinary industry leaders. 

SEE THE DAY 1 AGENDA HERE

SEE THE DAY 2 AGENDA HERE

Please follow @MrHealthcareCIO for up-to-the-minute happenings at the event.

CIOs Should Align With The C-Suite On IT Budgets

The final decision-making role of the CIO within an organization’s leadership team is being widely debated and discussed by both CIOs and line-of-business executives. CIOs are realizing they will have more influence inside their organizations if they partner more effectively with others in the executive suite.

To shed some light on this topic, XChange events and IDC Health Insights conducted a study of CIOs who attended our recent Healthcare IT Summit and the results were somewhat surprising. Only 20 percent said they are the final decision-maker on IT budgets with a slight majority—58 percent—stating that they are on the team that makes decisions on IT budgets. The remaining 22 percent said that they have an influence on budgets, but are not responsible for hard decision-making.

These results show that the large majority (78 percent) of IT leaders in the healthcare space are thoroughly involved in the decision-making process, along with the team of other C-suite leaders in their organization, and/or are the final decision-maker in regard to IT budgets. What do the results tell us?

For one—CIOs and IT leaders in the healthcare industry are working more collaboratively with their line-of-business leaders, and according to the CIOs that we spoke with, it is definitely beneficial for IT departments. It also tells us that with more influence on the budget, IT leaders are able to impact the organization through the use of IT tools, while better integrating those solutions into the rest of the business infrastructure.

“Being the final decision-maker, and being a part of the budget decision-making team, positively affects our IT department because it allows IT to have the input and voice needed to guide our organization from an IT perspective,” said Brian Sterud, the director of information management at Brookings Health System.

It also could potentially leave room for innovation on the IT leaders’ part—the sky’s the limit. “My role in the budget decision-making has been beneficial for IT because it really helps us get the things that we want and need, especially during the changes that are coming around the bend (meaningful use, etc.), and I am afforded the latitude to make those decisions,” said Sterud.

Richard Corovessis, chief of information technologies at Health Quality Partners, said, “I make the decisions on what is going to be valuable to us and important to the success of our organization. I am the king of the IT department so it is very positive for me to have such a large role in the IT buying process.” 

Why Enterprise Data Warehousing Is A ‘Must-Have’ For CIOs

Leveraging information to improve performance is a “must-have” core competency that all healthcare CIOs are striving for today, and enterprise data warehousing is a preferred avenue to do just that.

According to Gartner, most organizations do not have the information, processes and tools needed to make informed, responsive enterprise decisions due to underinvestment in an information infrastructure at the enterprise level.

 “In traditional companies, departments manage analytics—number-crunching functions select their own tools and train their own people. But that way, chaos lies,” wrote Thomas Davenport in his book Competing On Analytics.

For this reason, among others, it is important for healthcare CIOs, both payer and provider, to begin to strongly consider finding ways to implement an enterprise data warehouse [EDW] initiative, that is aligned with key business strategies and needs, in order to finally organize and secure their data. It provides IT leaders with the support of realtime decision-making. This is even more crucial in times like these where we are on the brink of massive changes to the healthcare industry, in which certain data requirements must be met.

Essentia Health, a hospital and clinic organization in need of an EDW, CIOs haven’t implemented one yet, but have made tremendous progress in getting the infrastructure and governance in place for the data governance components. They have the organization moving forward with the initiative.

 “The onset of the project is to get the organization to buy in that this is a strategic project [which is not going to happen overnight], and we, as an organization, had to rally around the need for enterprise data warehousing as we embark upon our ACO strategy, meaningful use etc. We had to do something different than our operational databases,” said Ken Gilles, CIO of Essentia Health.

With an enterprise level forum in place to oversee EDW prioritization and data governance, Essentia Health is on the positive path. “It’s going to provide more meaningful data than we have available today—it will provide more of the data to know what we are getting into and how we will need to function in environments such as health management entry and risk-sharing arrangements,” said Gilles.

Similar to Essentia Health’s EDW initiative, Orlando Health, one of Florida’s most comprehensive private and not-for-profit healthcare networks including community hospitals, specialized hospitals and a world-class cancer center, has an EDW in the works. It already has its EDW (Healthcare DataWorks product) platform in place with its pilot deliverable and an analytics executive governance structure being formed. It is in the process of continuing to inventory its resources: departmental BI/DSS technologies, reporting sources and supporting staff before its initial data load validation, although it has about 10 percent of it populated at this time.

Orlando Health’s CIO, Rick Schooler, was just named the CIO of the Year at HIMSS 2012 in Las Vegas this past February. He is the 23rd recipient of the award, and has worked in the healthcare industry for 21 years. In a conversation with Schooler about his EDW implementation, he said that he is primarily looking for “one source of truth” to act as a feeder to all of the different kinds of internal and external reporting services with his organization, as well as the data mining, analytics and data analysis efforts that every provider organization conducts.

“We cant keep doing the kinds of data extracting and BI in our respective silos that we are doing—it just isn’t going to work in the future of healthcare. It’s got to be integrated information that really gives the true complete picture for whatever the need. With the changes ahead, the healthcare industry is going to be a completely different world. We’ve got to get our hands around all the information, and get it into a consolidated and integrated single source of truth that can serve the entire organization,” said Schooler.

With all successful plans come some challenges, and EDW initiatives are no different. Some challenges include: key organization champions either delaying or denying to be on board with the project; departmental data ownership issues; the quality of the data; hiring knowledgeable and experienced staff; or competing projects that may take precedence. “Probably the main challenge is migrating the data to the warehouse from all of the different sources of data, whether it’s internal or external, from all of the different systems that we have,” said Gilles.

“The biggest challenge in doing EDW is getting to the point of having the kind of capability to harness all of the different source systems. Furthermore, getting that information extracted, transformed and loaded into a warehouse platform that people will see as credible, will trust and will begin to use, as compared to the point-to-point interfaces or extracts that they get in the source systems dumping into their tool of choice, which they are convinced is the truth,” said Schooler.

He also explained that there is a challenging need for the right team of experts, who know the know the data inside and out, know the EDW model and the data mining tools to make sure that it’s valid before it goes into the warehouse. Most healthcare organizations don’t have the needed skill sets sitting on their payroll, so recruiting the right people to be on this team—with the right skill set and the right kind of experience—is going to be absolutely critical to success. Orlando Health currently has 10 to 15 people on their EDW team, and is growing by the day.

So, what would be these CIOs’ advice to other healthcare CIOs out there? Get it sold, get it bought in and get the right people behind it. As soon as that happens, establish an executive level governance group, which will represent the different areas of the organization, and keep everyone in the organization up to date on where you are headed.

Top 20 iPad Medical Apps

With the recent release of the new Apple iPad and the increasing need to take their work on the go, healthcare professionals everywhere are taking advantage of all the innovative aspects that the iPad has to offer. With BYOD and the increasing need for mobility strategies and network infrastructure security, this iPad craze really means one thing: more work for the healthcare CIO.

So, once a healthcare CIO puts iPads in the hands of their payer or provider staff, the question is: What apps should they download? Below are the 20 most sought-after medical iPad applications that all medical professionals with iPads should (must) have, based on a list compiled by iMedicalApps.com, as well as the Apple App Store statistics, deeming these medical applications highest rated and most downloaded.

1.     ICD 10 Codes

2.     Blausen Human Atlas

3.     Visual DX Mobile

4.     Procedures Consultant

5.     OsiriX or eFilm

6.     My Medical

7.     MediMath Medical Calculator

8.     Pocket Medical Spanish

9.     LabGear

10. MyHealth Checklist

11. MedAbbreviations

12. Healthx

13. FOCUS Pocket Guide

14. Dropbox

15. Black Bag

16. Drugs & Medications

17. Papers

18. WebMD

19. Code Check Pro

20. Memo Medical Notebook

Medical professionals want to be able to do their jobs quicker and more efficiently and iPad applications, like those mentioned, answer their questions and access their patients’ data in ways they never thought possible. For this reason, many healthcare CIOs have been challenged with the task of distributing and/or securing iPads on their IT infrastructure.

“Members of our medical staff have said that they love using iPads applications because of the constant connectedness that iPads offer. We don’t currently give out iPads to our staff—they are put on our infrastructure through BYOD— but we plan to do so on July 1. We plan to have at least 60 percent of our staff use them clinically at the start of our next fiscal year,” said Patrick Wilson, department information security officer at Contra Costa County Health Services. Once they completely secure the data theft and other safety principals, they will move forward with their iPad distribution, as those security issues are their biggest concern, Wilson added.

Payer organizations face the same security challenges as providers when it comes to iPad use, but many CIOs in that space feel that the applications available are worth the risk. Robert Schleichert, associate vice president of information systems at AultCare, said that their iPad implementation plan is currently in the RND stage; he confirmed that iPads are the future of the healthcare payer industry.

IT vendors have noticed the significant increase in the need, and desire, for iPads in the healthcare space and are working diligently to provide the best solutions to all their infrastructure and security needs. In a conversation with Mark Hanson, director of strategic accounts for healthcare at Fortinet, he said: “I definitely think those iPad applications are absolutely worth the risks. At HIMSS 2012, Aetna, for example, got to see their chairman of the board do a presentation on mobile applications. This insurance provider is actually spending over a half a billion dollars on building and purchasing mobile applications companies for healthcare.”

The patients are more and more efficient at understanding what their ailments are; so healthcare professionals have to be able to enable their physicians to understand the latest information on specific problems their patients are facing. IT companies like Fortinet are stepping in to integrate and prevent those devices from infecting the networks and spreading that infection. “Having security-based Wi-Fi devices, like what we offer, are key requirements for healthcare CIOs today when implementing iPad application solutions,” said Hanson.

ACO Model A Major Tech Challenge For Payer CIOs, Says Study

While many healthcare payer organizations plan to participate in the new healthcare business models, specifically Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), most do not have the technology in place to reach this goal.

According to a recent HealthEdge Payer Market study, 55 percent of the executives surveyed said that they plan to implement ACOs within the next three years. However, 63 percent of those participants also said that they currently do not have the necessary technology to support those changes. HealthEdge surveyed more than 100 IT executives.

“We’ve got this very interesting industry situation where many of the payer organizations out there are quickly realizing that they must participate in the new healthcare business models if they are truly going to compete in the new economy. But at the same time, when the majority of those organizations are looking closer at what it takes to accomplish those goals, they are coming to a different reality,” said Raymond M. Desrochers, the executive vice president of sales and marketing at HealthEdge.

According to Healthcare IT News, there are six technology components that are essential for the successful operation of an ACO at a high level. These technology components are: role-based security, clinical data exchange, data aggregation, performance management, reporting infrastructure and financial infrastructure.

Payer organizations that plan to implement the new business models are going to have to adopt these next-generation technologies in order to move with the changing times in the healthcare industry, whether they like it or not, or whether they are prepared to or not. And, based on the survey data, more than two-thirds of the survey participants stated that their infrastructures are not ready, technologically. This is great news for vendors, like HealthEdge, who are ready and willing to provide those technology solutions.

 “The one-size-fits-all healthcare offerings of yesterday are being rapidly replaced by options that support new levels of individualization, personalization and customization, and new levels of risk-sharing between payers, providers and members,” said HealthEdge CEO Rob Gillette. “Given this reality, it is not surprising that the survey respondents clearly indicated the need for modern technology platforms that will enable them to successfully compete in the emerging healthcare economy.  We look forward to continuing to play a major role in the market’s technology transformation.”

The market’s transformation is a bright opportunity for all vendors in the healthcare IT space, especially for ACO solutions, as it was voted the No. 1 business model to be adopted by the participants over the course of the next three years. Healthcare CIOs need to take some time to begin thinking about their plans for the future and what technology solutions they will need to realize their ambitions. The times are changing—CIOs can either change with them or fall behind the pack.