Week 11: Emerging Technology Innovations and Sustainable HIT Practice

Biological, mechanical, and information technologies offer leaders tools that enable them to achieve organizational goals with greater product and service quality, leapfrog competitors in the market, and create new markets. Sometimes leaders decide to adopt evolving and innovative technologies that are in early development cycles and other times they make deliberate decisions not to be early adopters. These may include, but are not limited to, biometric and wearable devices, cloud-based applications, voice recognition technologies, or genomics directed at personalized medicine models. Regardless, it is the responsibility of the organizational leader to understand emerging technology capabilities and assess where these capabilities might enable their strategic imperatives and make their organization more effective. This constant scanning of the environment is an important part of strategic leadership thinking.

Keep in mind emerging technology advancements in health span the breadth of not only information technology but also advancements in biological sciences. For example, developments in molecular science and genetics offer capabilities to personalize medical practice through the use of both bio bank and electronic health record information. Customized pharmaceuticals and nanotechnologies offer unique ways to deliver therapies. While many new technologies offer novel innovations, advances in information technology such as cloud storage serve leaders by significantly reducing infrastructure costs.

This week you are asked to select and discuss an emerging trend in biological or information technology. You will be assessing your own and your colleagues’ views on how these trends can affect significant change in the health sector.

Learning ObjectivesStudents will:

• Create a presentation for recommending a Health Information System for a health care organization
• Evaluate the strategic alignment of various emerging health technologies

Discussion: Technology and the Future in Health Care-Transformational Trends and Forces

Note: For this discussion you are required to complete your initial post before you will be able to view and respond to your colleague’s postings. Begin by clicking on the “Post to Discussion Question” link and then select “Create Thread” to complete your initial post. Remember, once you click submit, you cannot delete or edit your own posts, and cannot post anonymously. Please check your post carefully before clicking 
Submit!

In this Discussion you are asked to select an emerging technology and evaluate its cost-effectiveness and potential adoption. Many novel technologies require significant rethinking of current workflows, roles, culture, and financial models. You are asked to consider how the technology you chose affects these aspects of the current health ecosystem. Likewise, leaders must also consider that some emerging technologies completely lack a financial policy framework.

To prepare:

• Assess an emerging technology trend in the Learning Resources or one that you prefer to research on your own.

By Day 3

Post:

Select one emerging trend in the health care and/or health care technology industry. What are three take-a-ways from this course that you could use to implement this trend? Given the financial alignment models in the health care industry today, would this technology be readily accepted and cost justified? If yes, explain. If no, what changes in financing policy would have to occur to deem this technology sustainable?