Health Information Management: Integrating Information Technology ...

STRATEGY, IMPLEMENTATION AND EVALUATION 163
right across the sector areas. An estimate of costs and required manpower is
made for each project, from which a tally offers an insight into what the budget
depletion will be. When reaching the previously determined percentage of the
budget (after subtracting the costs for infrastructure), the remaining projects are
placed below the line.
Priority 3 are the projects and activities surrounding replacements. This refers
to the necessary or planned replacement of existing information systems.
Replacement is placed lower in the priorities to let growth and strategy-driven
renewal prevail above retaining current functionalities. Here too, costs are
estimated, and projects that no longer fit go below the line.
Priority 4 are projects and activities whose turn has come. This refers to
projects which do not fall within the previous categories, but for which funds
should be released for other reasons considered desirable or necessary. For
example for legal obligations, or to prevent the neglect of a particular
organization unit. The amount of resources released for this category is
determined in advance in relation to the rest.
Priority 5 are the projects and activities below the line. These are projects for
which there is a need but which were not sufficiently highly ranked. These will
not be carried out in the relevant time frame.
The result of this priority setting exercise is an outline of the development and
project plan expressed in time, along with an estimate of costs.
CONCLUSION
Building on the visions for the future directions of health care work processes
presented in the previous chapters, this chapter gave guidelines on how to draft
an information strategy, and on what it should contain. Examples were given of
how ambitions for improved health care work processes can be translated into
corresponding ambitions for the use of IT.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1 PCIS vendors are currently introducing Tablet PC based
applications. The Board of Directors asks you, as the information
manager, to give an advice on introducing the Tablet PC into the health
care organization. Which topics would you address in your advice to
the BoD?
2 Your Board of Directors asks you, as the new information manager,
to update your department’s five year old IT strategy document. As the
BoD is a strong practitioner of integral management by the business unit
managers, you are asked to work directly with each of the 12 business
unit managers. How would you structure the process of formulating the
strategy? Make a project outline, addressing intermediate deliverables
in a time-line.