Providers Discuss Advantages Of Creating Health IT Internally

By Greg Bengel, contributing writer

According to some providers and experts, building health IT in-house rather than going with off-the-shelf options may save money and produce more effective results

Recently, InformationWeek Healthcare ran a story on why hospitals still build their own health IT rather than utilize off-the-shelf technology. The story is of particular relevance now, as we recently completed our observance of National Health IT Week in which the health IT community raised awareness for the importance of the growing field.

According to InformationWeek Healthcare, even though the market is dominated by off-the-shelf technology like Epic and Cerner, many providers are electing to build their own technology in-house. Even though building in-house technology is challenging, off-the-shelf technology like Epic and Cerner “can be expensive and disruptive to existing physician workflow, leading a number of health organizations to start from scratch,” the article says.

One expert quoted in the article is Carl Shulman, director of the William Lehman Injury Research Center at the University of Miami in Florida. “The Cerners and Epics of the world try to do too much," he says. "They become incredibly inefficient and in some cases almost useless.”

In-house technology, the article explains, is often preferable because it is tailor-made to whatever the unique needs of the specific organization are. Also quoted is Landmark Hospitals CEO William Kapp, who says, “We found the IT solutions in the open market were not going to meet our needs. We couldn't find a solution that made any sense for us and the existing options were prohibitively expensive.” Landmark needed an EHR that doubled as an HIE between its five hospitals. They put together an in-house team to develop their own product, which they call Chartpad.

Another provider to chime-in on the advantages of in-house IT is Adam Landman, CMIO for health information and integration at Brigham and Women’s. “With a vendor product, you get only what the product offers,” he says. “You can configure it, but the product only does or doesn't do what it's offering. With in-house technology, you can do almost anything with the software. You have to work to prioritize those resources.”

All of this only further emphasizes what has been reported widely of late – whether going the in-house or off-the-shelf route, the health IT field is set to explode. As the article explains, concerning the in-house route, “Determining priorities stems from a solid development team that is able to collaborate with clinical and business staff to build a product that isn't only technically sound, but usable on the physician level.”

According to an infographic from the University of Illinois at Chicago, 50,000 health informatics workers will be needed in the next five to seven years. Further, there is a 21 percent projected increase in health IT jobs between 2010 and 2020.