Two health system CIOs say the traditional enterprise IT model is changing as AI reshapes technology work and more tech expertise spreads across healthcare organizations.
For Will Landry, senior vice president and CIO of Baton Rouge, La. -based FMOL Health, that could mean enterprise IT becomes increasingly concentrated around cybersecurity and governance.
“I do think that the traditional enterprise IT model is going to … really turn into primarily cybersecurity and governance,” Mr. Landry said Sept. 16 during Becker’s 11th Annual IT + Revenue Cycle Conference: The Future of AI & Digital Health in Chicago.
Mr. Landry said health system IT departments could become less focused over time on traditional infrastructure and application oversight. He also pointed to the proliferation of technology and so-called shadow IT across organizations as governance becomes increasingly important.
“Enterprise IT is going to be, I think, way more focused on just governance and cybersecurity in the long run,” he said.
Mr. Landry made the comments during a panel titled “The Next Gen Healthcare IT Workforce,” alongside Uday Madasu, CIO of Knoxville, Tenn.-based Covenant Health.
Mr. Madasu said traditional IT functions will remain necessary, but he expects the focus of health system IT organizations to move increasingly toward capabilities and outcomes.
He said areas such as servers, network equipment and infrastructure are a means to an end, while IT teams should focus on whether technology improves experiences, access, financial performance and care.
“The traditional model is still there. You still need the plumbing, you need the infrastructure, but the focus is capabilities and outcomes,” Mr. Madasu said.
That evolution could also involve technology expertise sitting outside centralized IT departments.
Mr. Madasu said technology employees can be embedded in areas such as finance, human resources and operations, provided the organization maintains a common understanding of data, cybersecurity and AI governance, as well as shared strategic priorities.
“The technology expertise doesn’t go away,” he said. “It can either sit in my shop, I’m OK with it sitting outside my shop, but we all have to sort of walk towards those things, same true north, if you will.”
Both CIOs said they do not currently expect AI to translate into health IT workforce reductions, instead describing a shift in the work employees perform.
Mr. Landry characterized the issue as a workforce reinvention challenge. He said FMOL Health is not planning for workforce reductions but does expect changes in administrative and IT work, with resources potentially shifting closer to patients and clinicians.
Within IT, Mr. Landry said employees could spend more time providing workflow support and subject matter expertise and less time on certain types of building and coding.
Mr. Madasu similarly said AI could change the work of analysts. As agentic AI takes on more building, configuration and testing, he said analysts could focus more on safely deploying technology, helping users understand it and determining whether the organization is getting value from it. He said report writers could also spend more time translating data into insights and action rather than retrieving the data itself.
“The question is not what positions can we eliminate but the question is what higher value work can we now do because we have a different set of tools and skills,” Mr. Madasu said.
Even as technology work becomes more distributed, Mr. Madasu said some responsibilities should remain internal.
“Governance accountability cannot outsource those, cannot delegate those because the buck stops with me and I’m accountable,” he said.
Mr. Landry also emphasized governance and cybersecurity as technology becomes more widespread across organizations. He said health systems will need to educate employees, clinicians and others about emerging technologies and how they should be used.
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/healthcare-information-technology/is-traditional-enterprise-it-disappearing-2-cios-weigh-in/
