Roundtable: Modern Infrastructure for healthcare delivery

Remote patient monitoring (RPM) devices. Smart hospital rooms. Asset tracking devices. Smartphones, laptops, tablets, and more. All these technologies are becoming commonplace as healthcare organizations (HCO) build out the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). 

These tools can support more personalized, data-driven, and coordinated care. But they also place immense pressure on HCO networks and infrastructure, and demand a new approach to connectivity, scalability, security, and long-term business strategy.

Andrew Craver, VP of Enterprise Segment Marketing, Spectrum Business, and Frank Cutitta, VP of DHX at CHIME, lead a roundtable of executives from leading health systems as they discussed healthcare tech trends and the infrastructure necessary to support them. 

The experts discussed how to address the most pressing challenges in infrastructure development. The consensus was that HCOs need to reexamine their approach to building and supporting the infrastructure for new technologies, including the AI-enabled tools that are poised to change the game for patient care. 

“We are at such an important inflection point in digital development, where healthcare organizations have to decide how they’re going to take on the next two, five, and ten years of infrastructure management,” said Cutitta. “There’s no more room for watch-and-wait tactics. Patients, clinicians, and executive leaders are all demanding more, so now is the time to make it happen.”

Making infrastructure a top priority

With AI on the horizon in a big way, HCOs can no longer solely rely on infrastructure they implemented five to ten years ago.

“We really don’t know what AI is going to require from the industry, nor how much technical debt it might bring to organizations,” said Christopher Scanzera, former CIO of AtlantiCare Health System and Lurie Children’s Hospital. “It’s going to be very important to plan ahead and pay attention to the concept of avoiding technical debt as we build.” 

For many health systems, that means taking another look at how to prioritize infrastructure development while staying within tight budgetary restrictions in a time of increasing economic instability. 

“As CIOs, we need to be certain that we’re going to have the budget and the resources to treat all new infrastructure as a critical spend — a minimum to keep the organization functioning. That’s a big perspective shift from the traditional view of IT as a cost center,” said Scott Smiser, CITO at Emory Healthcare in Georgia.

On premise or in the cloud?

As HCOs revisit infrastructure budgets, they’re also taking a second look at where they want to center their efforts: in-house or in the cloud. A shift to cloud resources has seemed inevitable as HCOs understand the amount of computer power required for AI-enabled services, but that’s not actually the case, argued some of the attendees.

“We all want the ‘magic wheel’ that AI and the IoMT can provide, but it costs a lot to make it happen on someone else’s infrastructure — and that cost is going to continue over time,” explained Mike Mosquito, Head of Enterprise Automation and Digital Transformation at Fox Rehab. “In contrast, if I bring it in-house, I can capitalize on the hardware that I need to run my AI engines — one time and I’m done, instead of continually devoting a huge amount of my operating budget to cloud providers every year.”

Hybrid clouds have become common at HCOs, enabling businesses to take advantage of the benefits of both private and public clouds as well as on-premises infrastructure. This way, HCOs can process every workload in the ideal environment, increasing productivity and enhancing agility while minimizing costs.

Either on premise, or in the cloud, or in a hybrid environment. “You just have to make sure you have the horsepower to run it,” cautioned Sara Meinke, Senior Director of Enterprise Business Systems at Baptist Health System. “If you’re not making enough of the critical investment to elevate the foundational aspects of your infrastructure, you’re not going to be successful.”

Thinking beyond hospital walls

The infrastructure conversation is expanding in more ways than one, especially for healthcare organizations seeking to advance remote monitoring and home-based care.

“As a country, we’re probably not going to keep building tons more inpatient beds,” noted Will Landry, SVP and CIO of Louisiana-based Franciscan Missionaries Our Lady Health System. “The financials are changing, and the technology is getting good enough that we can start moving lower acuity needs into other settings, particularly into the home.” 

“That means we have a degree of responsibility to ensure that people have connectivity in those places if we want them to be able to use their devices and stay engaged when they’re not under our roof,” agreed Smiser.

The healthcare system can’t continue its push to address the social determinants of health without better connectivity in hard-to-reach areas, added Kevin Bidtah, CIO of Evergreen Health in upstate New York.

“Digital health is becoming a literal lifeline for many patients, especially those who can’t afford to shop around because there aren’t many other options,” he said. “Without strong networks in these communities, we’re not going to solve for the problems that we’re seeing with the social determinants of health.” 

Rural connectivity is of particular concern for many of the leaders on the panel. “In Georgia, when you go south of the Atlanta area, there’s no access in some places there — sometimes there’s not even a doctor or a hospital; maybe there’s one ambulance,” said Mosquito. “There’s certainly no reliable connectivity.”

State and federal entities have been working to bring better connectivity to areas like these and so have companies with expertise in infrastructure development and strong partnerships with health systems serving these populations. “We’re engaged in a large-scale build-out of rural connectivity, which gives us plenty of opportunities to look at how we can help solve these problems,” said Craver. 

Spectrum Business can help 

Our nationwide fiber network ensures that large volumes of crucial medical data are immediately available, and all locations stay connected, no matter how remote. Find out why more than 115,000 HCOs have partnered with us to provide secure connectivity and communications solutions.