Report: Consumerization of IT products strains healthcare IT departments

A survey of 100 provider organizations' executives and health IT managers revealed that the growing presence of iPads and other consumer-grade tablets in clinical settings has created difficulties for CIOs and IT departments, who must integrate those products into their clinical information systems.

“There is a sense of concern among healthcare IT executives that pressure to meet the demands of end-users to support consumer-grade computing and communications devices, like the iPad, is coming at the expense of other important priorities,” read the 2011 report detailing the survey’s results.

BizTechReports surveyed executive and management level health IT professionals to reach these conclusions and the Washington, D.C.-based research agency published the report in conjunction with Secaucaus, N.J.-based Panasonic Solutions, a division of electronics manufacturer Panasonic.

According to the survey results:

  • Sixty-six percent of respondents agreed that consumer-grade tablets posed governance challenges for their organizations;
  • Fifty-five percent agreed that enterprise applications, such as EHR management, were not designed to be viewed on consumer-grade tablets;
  • Sixty-six percent agreed that the “consumerization of IT” was complicating their ability to manage information resources;
  • Seventy-four percent agreed that consumer-grade tablets posed challenged for enterprise application data input;
  • Ninety-four percent agreed that hospital and clinical settings required durable and rugged devices; and
  • Sixty-six percent agreed that providing IT support for consumer-grade tablets increased IT costs.
The report suggested that the consumerization of products like consumer-based tablets has benefitted the healthcare industry by forcing IT departments to do more to accommodate end-users, but that it has also put organizations at risk of being burdened by additional costs and of being unnecessarily exposed.

“Pressure to adopt and integrate these technologies is driven by the fact that customer service and end-user satisfaction is an increasingly important metric against which the success or failure of technology organizations are measured,” the report concluded. “However, this metric must be balanced against other imperatives.”

Read the report in its entirety here.

Around the web

CMS finalized a significant policy change when it increased the Medicare payments hospitals receive for performing CCTA exams. What, exactly, does the update mean for cardiologists, billing specialists and other hospital employees?

Stryker, a global medtech company based out of Michigan, has kicked off 2025 with a bit of excitement. The company says Inari’s peripheral vascular portfolio is highly complementary to its own neurovascular portfolio.

RBMA President Peter Moffatt discusses declining reimbursement rates, recruiting challenges and the role of artificial intelligence in transforming the industry.