Health IT leadership must drive big-picture strategies

Key Points

FOR TECHNOLOGY professionals leading IT efforts among health plans, the biggest changes in recent years haven't come from hardware and software, but rather, from their roles in implementing and understanding new strategy and business concepts.

"For CTOs, technical skills are necessary, but no longer sufficient," says Brian LeClaire, vice president and CTO for Louisville, Ky.-based Humana. "Their ability to succeed, both now and in the future, will depend on their ability to understand the business side of healthcare, as well as their ability to think and act like a businessman. That change has been happening gradually over time, but its pace has been greatly accelerated by the emphasis that health reform puts on IT."

"In the past, CTOs could succeed by being expert technologists who simply executed the strategies developed by their C-suite counterparts in finance and operations," says Michael Tucker, general manager of PBM products and technology for global healthcare IT consultancy, IMS Health. "However, in today's environment, the CTO needs to be well versed in the business strategy and key performance measures that drive overall business success. In other words, a successful CTO needs to convert technology innovation and project execution into concrete business value."

CTOs who want to play a greater role not only need to brush up on their business knowledge, they also need to become adept at marketing themselves to both co-workers and external business partners, LeClaire says.

He says the CTO should focus on using technology to accomplish at least one of three things:

LeClaire says they need to be proactive by identifying a solution that meets one of those criteria and then they must be able to present it to the organization's business leaders and others who are responsible for execution.