Assessing the Value of IT: Understanding and Measuring the Link Between IT and Strategy

An organization is considering spending 18 months and millions of US dollars to implement a new business application. How does one know if this project will deliver any positive, quantifiable results to the organization? Exactly how are the costs of delivering these results and the value produced by the information technology going to be measured? Without a systematic approach toward the valuation of IT projects that includes a process for measuring progress toward specific, quantifiable business goals, most IT managers, cost accountants and auditors will not be able to answer these questions with confidence and justify the value of IT projects to the organization. This article defines a method for assessing the value of IT as it affects the strategic capabilities of the organization, vs. simple cost-efficiencies, by using the value chain to link IT projects to strategies and business processes
Assessing the Value of IT: Understanding and Measuring the Link Between IT and Strategy

Home Health Services -mHealth

Organized home health in India is an untapped potential. Home health care is defined as rendering predominantly medically-related services to patients in a home setting rather than in a medical facility. Home health care may include skilled nursing in addition to speech, occupational and physical therapy. It also includes monitoring the patient's prescriptions. In an Indian context, assistance to activities of daily living does not seem to make much sense.

What are the challenges in putting together a home health delivery model?
-> Organizing a fleet of nurses and therapists (Logistics)
-> Maintaining longitudinal patient progress and history
-> Minimize manual documentation requirements
-> Lack of ability to compare the acquired data with reference values
-> Open source software to capture data at patient site
-> Sync up PC data to the Hospital Information System or EMR
-> Connectivity to the Internet at the patient premises for self monitoring
-> Medical device to PC or cellular connection using USB, wire or Bluetooth
-> Data transmission via broadband, GSM, CDMA to Hospital Information System

Some considerations:
(1) Use of wireless Body Area Networks (BAN) as an alternative to conventional monitor - Example: The disposable unit consists of a ECG patch, analog amplification circuit, battery, and radio transmitter that sends signals to a Wireless Handheld Device either through USB or Bluetooth. The handheld will connect to the Mobile Healthcare Platform of the Hospital Information System.
(2) Use of tele-health monitors that capture data from multiple devices and transmit data to back-end servers via broadband.
With advent of 3G networks and low cost broadband services and WiFi, connectivity to the back end servers will be easier than before.
(3) Evaluation of Free Open Source Software (FOSS) for mobile platform and its counterpart back end enterprise application is a challenge.
Based on survey conducted by Center for Social Research India for Novo Nordisk in 2006 for diabetes monitoring, Home based monitoring was 86% less than monitoring at hospital and 89% of the patients are self funded. For a sustainable model for the service provider, more number of people need to adopt home monitoring. Longitudinal information capture and automatic alerting, self reliance, logistical ease are good value proposals for patients to switch.

Concept to Reality – Home Health Services

A preamble to introducing a new service or product is the associated marketing plan also known as the business development plan. Successfully introducing organized home health in the market involves painstaking research to understand the segment that will be receptive to the offer, the target population that will consume the service, and the positioning of the service. The positioning must consider internal imperatives and external competitive forces and cover strategic and tactical dimensions. This note presents initial thoughts and consideration to drive the first steps of the initiative.

Some critical questions that the plan should address are as follows:
• Definition of home health
• Demographic analysis of the market
• Manpower requirements and logistics
• Competitive climate
• Use of technology in health monitoring
• Financial analysis and breakeven
• Infrastructure requirements
• Roadmap and milestones
• Key differentiators (business model)
• Early internal alignment

Few challenges:
• Most reports on Indian Hospital sector are expensive
• The requirements vary dramatically from urban to rural and among age groups
• No canned reports on home health
• Need to understand regulatory and liability constraints
• Need to work with technology vendors to demonstrate a workable prototype as a part of the study

A suggested approach to convert the concept to a tangible plan is to put together a funded task force. The funded team should consist of two sets of individuals. One group will work with the internal verticals to assess the viability of services offered under the proposed umbrella. The other team should focus on the market dynamics culling primary and secondary market intelligence data. The team should be very familiar with the corporate vision, operational expectations, and financials.

Weaving IT into Organizational Strategy

Information technology has progressively moved from the periphery to the center of corporate strategy. This brief is not a prescription or an exhaustive recommendation but only brings to fore some of points to trigger in depth analysis on IT-Business alignment.

To build an effective foundation for execution, an organization has to pay attention to its operating model, enterprise architecture, and IT engagement model. Such a foundation calls for formulating an IT strategy that aligns with the business strategy, building internal partnerships between IT and business units, and reengineering of IT as a business partner. IT must enable, support, and drive organization growth. Creating or changing the information strategy impacts corporate strategic planning process, organizational structure and power equations, information systems responsibilities, and technology stack.

The first step to having an empowering IT agenda is to recognize the associated cost implications, complexity, and consequences. “Defensive IT” ensures operational reliability while “Offensive IT” helps organizations leapfrog the competition through clever use of emerging technologies and carries an element of risk. Each style has unique governance needs and must be lead by a skilled communicator who can challenge entrenched in-house thinking. An important point to keep in mind is that achieving and sustaining IT-business alignment is difficult and often treacherous.
Health sector in general has been lagging in adopting information technology for a variety of reasons like lack of demonstrated cost effectiveness, interoperability, high adoptions cost, and confidentiality requirements. Some of the challenges are unique to the health industry alone but many are common to industries at large and it may be worthwhile taking lessons from outside of this vertical.

Bringing information strategy into the boardroom makes the organization agile and equips it to respond quickly to a fast changing and evolving market. It brings together motivated experts, empowered decision makers and digitized process. A strategic execution officer or the CIO, under the umbrella of a “Center of Excellence for Innovation and Technology,” could evangelize the need for strategic information management, make IT investment decisions, transition management, and coordinate enterprise change projects.

Healthcare IT in India - An Optimistic Outlook - Issue 18 - Information Technology - Asian Hospital & Healthcare Management

Challenges in integrating IT into the healthcare system in India are many, but they can be addressed through leadership and vision.
Healthcare IT in India - An Optimistic Outlook - Issue 18 - Information Technology - Asian Hospital & Healthcare Management

Revamped Info System revives Delhi Hospital

Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in Delhi has gone on a journey of computerisation for more than two decades. An in-house system was built in the beginning. But it became “terribly dated”, prompting the hospital to adopt a commercially available package Health Information System
Read the full article here on Future Gov India

Union Budget 2010-11 Roadmap for Healthcare in India - eHealth Article

Union Budget 2010-11 Roadmap for Healthcare in India - eHealth Article

Healthcare, expected to reach over US$75 billion by 2010 and US$150 billion by 2017, has a huge potential for growth in India.
The link analyses the prospects that the current budget unfolds in terms of financial allocations and policy measures to give a boost to healthcare industry in India.

Healthcare Technology Investments in India

Read this interesting article by following the link below
Kid in a Candy Store

A Springboard press release on Healthcare IT Spending in India
Healthcare IT Spending in India to Grow at 22% from 2009-13, finds Springboard Research

Public market research reports for Healthcare Market Research in India

There are some reports available in the public domain (Members only access though :-( ). Links to premium reports are also given in the website. Please follow the link below.
Public market research reports for Healthcare Market Research in India, November 2010

Innovations in Healthcare Management and Innovations

IPQC has some great papers and presentations on the following:
Mobile Healthcare Delivery
e-Health in Asia Pacific
Defining and Testing EMR Usability

Click here to read them. All free IPQC Konwledge Center

Enjoy the read