| | NOVEMBER 20199CIOReviewfor vendors and health care providers to move in this direction. Open APIs and an increased focus on standards is helping in this areas. Another opportunity for health care organizations is to reduce the number of products, services, and vendors, and instead establish strategic vendor partnerships. The tradeoff here is that though we lose a little of the best of each system, we can obtain value from interconnecting the systems, monitoring and managing them. Strategic points to be noted going forwardAt the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, we are a local government organization that is focused on fair and open vendor solicitations. When entering into a contract with a vendor, we specify what our requirements are, and clearly delineate our responsibilities are, as well as what our vendors' roles are. If the demand changes later on, having a detailed Statement of Work (SOW) and contract helps to clarify obligations. Therefore, it is important to have a contract that is amenable to both sides. When it comes to developing software, products, and services, our outlook has changed from a waterfall approach to a more agile mindset. Hence, we have begun to look at how we can bring more functionality into the organization in a shorter period of time. A path to successThere is a growing digital movement happening across all industry sectors with the entry of such advanced technologies as artificial intelligence, machine learning, analytics, predictive analytics, genomics, and precision medicine in the health care environment. More emphasis is now on systems becoming software-defined, and the healthcare industry will need to adopt and virtualize their technologies accordingly, as well as manage their security. We need to understand that traditional security perimeters are vanishing. There is a greater need for more security or advanced intelligence to analyze, monitor, and assess our systems, processes, and individual identities. As users traverse networks between desktops and applications through access systems, we need to evaluate their activity and detect if there are any anomalies at each point along the way and take the necessary actions if required. Only requiring security checks when a user enters the environment or logs into their system is no longer enough.Advice to the healthcare community With all the changes happening around, it is always good to understand what works best for your organization and develop strong relationships with strategic vendors as they have a lot to offer. Being customer-focused and over delivering, coupled with being knowledgeable and focused on the goals of your organization, is the best way to understand the best path forward. There is a tremendous need for more security or advanced intelligence to analyze, monitor and assess our technology capabilities
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