Good IT service management (ITSM) plays an essential role in modern healthcare.
The IT team is perhaps most visible to staff when there is an issue that needs to be resolved.
And this is unfortunate because aside from fighting the daily IT fires that appear in any organisation; a good team will also be constantly identifying new ways to optimise processes and costs, as well as looking to introduce new services and solutions to improve the experience for both staff and patients.
However, providing efficient IT services is made challenging by a number of factors, some of which are unique to the healthcare sector.
Many providers are hindered by heavily-siloed departments, which means various parts of their organisation have their own disparate processes and systems that cannot easily communicate and share data.
This frequently causes unnecessary delays whenever more than one department is needed to complete a task.
And the issue is often compounded by the reliance on outdated legacy systems.
While these problems are prevalent across businesses in all sectors, many healthcare providers are further stymied by budget constraints, particularly when it comes to NHS trusts.
Many providers are hindered by heavily-siloed departments, which means various parts of their organisation have their own disparate processes and systems that cannot easily communicate and share data
Any healthcare provider working directly with patients also faces additional challenges around finding the necessary downtime for changing and upgrading systems and processes.
With any interruptions to services having the potential to harm the health of patients, healthcare providers must keep disruption to an absolute minimum.
Overcoming the IT challenges
Although the healthcare sector will always have additional challenges to overcome, these issues can be mitigated with the right ITSM tools.
A good IT service management platform can form the backbone of the organisation’s ability to respond to incidents and requests and keep infrastructure running.
This creates a unified approach to IT that drastically improves the team’s visibility of issues, enabling both better tactical activity and long-term strategic planning.
Equipping the IT team with a high-quality ITSM solution will enable it to handle the daily technical needs of healthcare staff much more quickly and efficiently, boosting productivity and keeping IT-related disruptions to a minimum.
More importantly, IT leaders can also use the ITSM platform as a central point to unite previously-siloed systems around the organisation.
This integrated approach to service makes it far easier to plan and deliver new and upgraded technology for the healthcare provider.
And all of this will help to improve cost efficiency and operational flexibility, boosting the experience for both staff and patients.
Reducing complexity
Implementing a ‘low-code’ ITSM solution can be particularly powerful, as it makes it even easier for the team to respond to changing internal needs and customise their own applications.
By equipping IT teams with the right ITSM solution, healthcare providers can overcome the natural challenges of operating in the sector and oversee a technical transformation that will drastically improve the experience for staff and patients alike
Low-code development platforms provide users with a graphical user interface for software development, rather than the more-complex and technical interface of traditional computer programming. This means that even less-experienced personnel can create and adapt software applications without the need for expensive development specialists.
By equipping IT teams with the right ITSM solution, healthcare providers can overcome the natural challenges of operating in the sector and oversee a technical transformation that will drastically improve the experience for staff and patients alike.
