In this week's
Looking Ahead, I continue with an update on our plans and areas of focus for 2016/17. I've included the areas of focus below and this week's topic is IT Transformation.
- Purpose, Values and Principles
- Clinical Optimization
- Caring Safely
- Patient Experience
- Team Engagement
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IT Transformation
- Michener Integration
- Research and Innovation
As we look across the organization, it is clear to all of us that our most valuable resources are our people and our data. This compels us to include both Team Engagement to support our people and IT Transformation to support these people in the important work they do every day among our 2016/17 goals. There is a need for greater coordination of IT expertise, resources, and investments from all areas of the organization that is inclusive of our clinical units, research labs and education centres.
To address this need, Deloitte completed an IT assessment, with external benchmarking, to compare UHN's IT activity across the enterprise against a cohort of comparable academic health sciences centres. The assessment examined 3 key areas of IT: the organizational structure; enterprise governance, and the enterprise level of spend in IT. The findings from the Deloitte assessment helped capture the current state of IT in the organization and provided recommendations to help UHN reach its aspirations of a digitally-enabled academic health science centre.
Today we are building on the external benchmarking work and formulating an IT transformation vision and work plan that will be communicated over the next few months. Town Halls will be held into the spring to communicate the details with all staff.
The IT Transformation initiative will lay the foundation for UHN to become a digitally-enabled research hospital. The initiative begins with incremental change to address the three areas reviewed in the IT assessment. This includes aligning all IT teams and services at UHN, improving governance with a focus on customer service, and coordinating all investments associated with technology.
In parallel, the IT Transformation team is currently engaging individuals from all areas through several "co-design events" set to take place over the coming year. These co-design events will identify opportunities for input and learning to establish the clinical, educational and research needs in our future state. At the same time, we need to continue to make progress on a number of important IT initiatives to address the immediate needs of today, such as the implementation of MOE-MAR at the Princess Margaret.
The IT Transformation initiative is led by Dr. David Jaffray, the Executive Vice President – Technology and Innovation partnering with technology leaders from across the organization including Lydia Lee, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer.
Together, we will create a digital future for UHN to support our three domains of clinical practice, research and education.
Peter
