Making the leap into Health IT
I wasn't always in the business of IT in the healthcare sector. In fact, I began my professional life as a physician. My interest in health IT arose when I helped a partner develop a new medical device for the Telehealth sector. There, I saw firsthand how technology helped us extend our reach to our patients. That was also when I understood the power of technology in providing patient care.
Speaking the same language
I believe it is important for IT professionals to acquire business domain knowledge, especially in healthcare. Having a medical background has given me two distinct advantages - I understand the healthcare business workflow and I talk the same language as my end-users, the medical professionals. In fact, as a CIO now, I don't think of myself as a "techie". I am a business owner. When I evaluate the needs of the end-user, I think about what would make their jobs easier, and then I see how we can use IT to achieve that.
An initiative like IDA's Techno-Strategists Programme, which aims to empower professionals with both technical and industry-specific domain knowledge, would give IT professionals specific healthcare domain knowledge and direct exposure to the inner workings of the industry.
Dr Muttitt: Pay attention to your stakeholders on the ground. Work closely with them and secure
their understanding. |
Learning on the job
The quickest way to get up to speed is to be part of the health IT projects, and to learn as much as you can on the job. You can, of course, gain a lot from book learning. Reading strategy documents or understanding new trends and state of the world from newspapers and magazines is beneficial. However, I feel it's more vital
to learn on the job, and always pay attention to what people on the ground level are saying.
IT professionals must be willing to take the time to understand and listen to your project stakeholders, business owners and leaders, and what they want out of their health IT projects. To ensure project success, it's 90 per cent listening - listen to your end-users, know their needs and be very thorough in understanding the workflow.
Pay attention to your stakeholders on the ground. Work closely with them
and secure their understanding. Sometimes it may end up becoming an "us vs. them" scenario. This cannot happen. We are partners in this quest; we all want the same end result, which is to provide better quality care for
our patients.
Build domain expertise early
I believe it's important to cultivate business domain expertise in Singapore's IT professionals as early as possible. Today, as part of the Techno-Strategists Programme, we're encouraging some polytechnics to incorporate healthcare domain training and experiences into their infocomm curriculum. For the healthcare professionals, we're also looking seriously at how to include informatics into the medical school and nursing school curricula. We want the medical professionals to leave school with the expectation that IT will be integral to their everyday lives.
Our aim is to build up the skills of both streams - IT professionals with healthcare domain knowledge and health professionals with IT knowledge. By providing both groups with opportunities to participate in current health IT projects, they'll be able to work together on the ground level, and more importantly, learn from one another.
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