What is IT and Clinical Engineering Convergence?
Why does IT and clinical engineering alignment matter?
In a healthcare system, the IT and clinical engineering departments are two separate teams with their own strategies, goals, and daily tasks. Clinical engineering (CE) is focused on the application of medical technology to the patient care delivery process, while information technology teams are tasked with managing the entire IT infrastructure.
At one time, technology improved the patient care experience; today, technology is the foundation. The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) has transformed the healthcare device connectivity landscape: the volume of devices, sensors, software and systems in the healthcare system grows exponentially each year. According to a 2019 Fortune Business study, the global IoMT market was valued at $425.5B in 2018 and will rise to $612.7B in 2025.
What is IoMT?
The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is the expansive network of medical devices, sensors, software, and technology systems that work together to create the patient care technology experience. IoMT is transforming healthcare as we know it. This hyper-connected network uses fast transit of data and alerts to track illness progression, predict diagnoses, and improve healthcare outcomes across the board.
These IoMT devices are increasingly dependent on IP-based networks, and clinical engineering departments are turning to their IT team for help to deploy and support this technology. Bandwidth requirements, security questions, and ongoing support are all questions that require knowledge of the IT infrastructure environment and strategy.
One route to improving the medical device evaluation, deployment, and support process is implementing IT and clinical engineering convergence. IT and CE convergence is a measurable and meaningful step towards achieving collaboration between these traditionally siloed teams, and improving your organization’s ability to use the IoMT to radically impact patient care.
What is IT and clinical engineering convergence?
IT and CE convergence is the migration of medical and IT devices onto a single network infrastructure. This approach results in many technical and organizational benefits for the medical device network:
Cost savings, due to less-complex implementations and consolidation of support staff
Improved data and device security, drawing on IT team cybersecurity vendors and expertise
Increased awareness within the IT department of medical device requirements
Accelerated ability for IT to accommodate remote and home-monitoring devices and sensors
An IT and CE convergence strategy creates cross-departmental visibility into strategic priorities and challenges. And ultimately, a defined IT and CE convergence strategy accelerates your healthcare system’s ability to achieve a connected care environment.
How do you get started?
Effective IT and clinical engineering convergence drives cost savings, contributes to more efficient implementation, and aligns support staff around the IT-centric nature of sophisticated medical device systems. As with any major improvement initiative, you should begin with an understanding of best practices. We’ve outlined our key takeaways from working with healthcare providers to achieve their convergence goals.
Our best practices for achieving IT and CE convergence:
Assess the impact of convergence on IP-based network demand.
The growing reliance of medical devices on IP-based networks places a heavy burden on reliability, scalability, and business continuity planning and investment—particularly for health systems still running two distinct networks for enterprise IT and medical devices. Convergence can reduce costs and risks and improve patient care operations in a number of ways. For example, interoperable solutions potentially can leverage shared infrastructure elements, such as WiFi or route/switch layer, to maximize investments, reduce facility requirements, and improve availability. Working collaboratively, CE and IT leaders can evaluate network-related technologies that will work well together, and identify new solutions in instances where compatibility may present a compliance challenge.
Create a shared resource model based on specific team member expertise.
You wouldn’t expect a biomedical engineer with a Ph.D. to have a deep understanding of traditional IP-based networks— nor should that be necessary. Likewise, you wouldn’t presume that a certified network engineer is an expert in medical device design. Develop a collaborative program that honors and maximizes your team members’ unique areas of expertise.
Anticipate and mitigate increased demands on your IT leader.
Integrating clinical engineering under the CIO has inherent risks, but bringing the CIO, IT leadership, and informatics leadership together early in the convergence strategy process can help ensure success. Clinical and CE leaders should provide a clear set of priorities and needs to the CIO and IT leadership. CIOs should also know they’ll likely face new vendor management challenges, since medical device vendor relationships can differ from traditional IT hardware vendor relationships in terms of clinical alignment, longevity and leverage.
Develop shared governance and accountability procedures.
Typically, IT and informatics leadership lack direct involvement with prior clinical engineering projects—and vice versa. Engage leaders collaboratively early and often to ensure that clinical engineering needs aren’t given lower priority simply because of lack of awareness and hierarchical structure. For example, selecting new clinical devices should be a decision discussed directly between IT, CE and clinical leadership. IT needs to be apprised of a device’s use in the clinical environment and the long-term roadmap for use. Similarly, clinical informatics leadership should ensure that CE and IT are aware of any changes to care delivery that can impact decision making or project implementation considerations.
Evaluate new vendor requirements with your big-picture strategy in mind.
Some vendor recommendations make it difficult to adhere to internal IT and CE roadmaps. These vendors have their own support and risk-related goals, which may not be aligned with your infrastructure best practices. To avoid additional costs, and barriers to consolidated strategic planning, be sure to research, evaluate and challenge any vendor infrastructure recommendations that could affect converged architecture. By integrating IT and clinical engineering organizations and strategic roadmaps, your united leadership can leverage the full breadth of internal expertise to press for, and achieve, the right vendor terms.
Ready to embrace convergence?
IT and CE convergence is more than a nice-to-have. It’s a powerful means of delivering on a health system’s commitment to community care, while staying ahead of ever-mounting cost pressures and technological opportunities.
Bring together the unique skillsets of both departments, along with the infrastructure, and your organization can achieve the operational and technical excellence that’s vital to connected care.
Our extended guide on this topic dives even deeper into the specific challenges you may encounter during IT and CE convergence projects, along with recommended solutions.