New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health senior vice president and CIO John Bosco oversees the information technology department of New York's largest integrated healthcare network.
Here are five quotes from Mr. Bosco on how the department is advancing care:
1. On creating an integrated network: "Every physician practice, hospital, imaging center, ASC and our many other care venues are connected together through our Health Information Exchange technology so all data about a patient can be delivered where and when it is needed."
2. On consumer-focused efforts: "Providing easier and more convenient access for consumers to access Northwell services is a major focus right now. We have got to make consumers feel we know them and their preferences when they come to us, make it easy to get an appointment through an app on their smartphone, and reduce the burden for them to provide the information we need to collect in order to treat them and produce a bill for our services."
3. On tackling cybersecurity issues: "With all of the cybersecurity problems happening today that you can read or hear about in the media almost every day, we continue to invest in people and technologies that prevent hackers and malicious software from entering our networks and systems. Training all Northwell employees on safe practices, such as not responding to potentially malicious emails, is paramount to our effort to protect our technology environments."
4. On staying ahead of technological changes: "We have invested in people, tools and new processes that will enable us to be more innovative and quicker to market with new technologies. ... We are deploying systems architected on open industry standards such as web, HL7, FHIR and other standards. Handshakes with external systems are enabled by employing open application programming interfaces stacks."
5. On workforce innovation: "We see more opportunities to increase collaboration and knowledge sharing across internal departments. Using more virtual workers and work-from-home programs presents an opportunity for us to bring down our labor and office space costs, while increasing employee satisfaction by providing the flexibility they may need and want for work-life balance. It's also possible we will look toward an IT office in another state in order to find enough talent for our projects."
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