Dispatch from Europe

I’ve been on the road for the past few days, describing the importance of patient and family engagement using mobile applications to healthcare leaders in Europe.   The dialog has been bidirectional.  I learned a great deal about the technology and policy challenges in each country.   Patients, payers, and providers are struggling with issues such as usability, security, and supportability.   My schedule has required several time zone changes - a keynote in Seattle on Saturday, a flight to London on Sunday for meetings with NHS leaders on Monday and a keynote in Birmingham on Tuesday.   In my discussion with UK leaders, they invoked the Chatham House Rule, something I had not heard about previously.  To encourage open dialog, anyone who attended the meeting was welcome to use information from the discussion, but not allowed to reveal who made any comment.In the UK, I heard a great deal about misalignment between IT departments and clinicians.  IT departments are reluctant to embrace social, mobile, analytics, and cloud, instead insisting on centralized command and control of Windows desktop devices, often running Citrix/Virtual Desktop. Clinicians want mobile devices, universal access to applications anytime from anywhere on any device, and big data visualizations.   There is innovation, with forward thinking firms creating novel mobile apps and piloting them in several NHS sites.In Berlin, I met with a diverse array of stakeholders f...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs