| | NOVEMBER 201919CIOReviewBy Brian Sterud, VP of IT/CIO/CISO, Faith Regional Health ServicesSTREAMLINING HEALTHCARE IT SERVICESIN YOUR EXPERIENCE, WHAT ARE SOME OF THE TRENDS AND CHALLENGES IN THE PROFESSIONAL SERVICES AUTOMATION SPACE TODAY?When it comes to the professional services automation space, one of the biggest areas that hold immense potential is cybersecurity. With the growing deluge of information, organizations are increasingly relying on the automation of trend and behavior analysis while correlating them to drive significant value. In certain instances, even with partial automation of processes, numerous companies are focusing on providing security officers with a curated list of both high-priority and low-priority tasks to perform. Correspondingly, in the healthcare space too, there exists an opportunity to make inferences based on correlating data from lab results or other reports of certain disease groups by leveraging emerging technologies and algorithms. This can streamline the decision-making capability of clinicians to appropriately categorize these diverse patient groups or provide proactive surveillance alerts on these groups.COULD YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR APPROACH TO IDENTIFYING THE RIGHT SOLUTION PROVIDERS IN THE MARKET?At a time when multiple vendors are offering innovative solutions in the healthcare space, it can be a real challenge to identify the right solution provider. With the help of our core vendors, we were able to adopt advanced technologies built upon automation. We follow specific evaluation processes for all our significant vendors every few years, which essentially allows us to carry out environmental assessments with new or emerging vendors and also to ensure the best prices from a vendor perspective. We have been an early adopter of cloud in healthcare, which is something unique because of the ever-changing regulatory landscape in the industry. In addition, we perform vendor evaluations from a cloud-first standpoint to ensure that they adhere to all the requisite regulations and standards.CAN YOU ELABORATE ON ANY RECENT PROJECTS THAT YOU ARE CURRENTLY WORKING, ITS SCOPE, AND THE EXPECTED OUTCOME?We are currently overseeing many large-scale projects involving a new ERP and EMR system scheduled to go live in about 90 days. This will allow us to bring in a more modern financial system and have data at our fingertips to make better-informed business decisions. From an EMR perspective, we are moving toward partnering with an industry leader that can help us drive better collaborations with local hospitals, boost interoperability, and improve the patient experience by enabling them to pay their bills and make appointments online through apps or patient portals. Added to this, we have implemented an infrastructure upgrade, both in our wired and wireless architecture, which has empowered us to fully implement micro-segmentation on our network, bolstering layered security internally.WHAT ARE THE STRATEGIC POINTS YOU DISCUSS WITH THE LEADERSHIP OR COLLEAGUES TO STEER THE COMPANY FORWARD IN THE MARKET?IT is an integral part of the decision-making process in the healthcare space right now, and as such, we have an IT steering committee that Brian Sterud has been serving as VP of IT, CIO and CISO at Faith Regional Health Services since 2012. He joined to Faith Regional from Brookings Health Systems where he was the Director of Information Management since 2008. Prior to this, Sterud had built a strong knowledge of the technology needs and initiatives within the healthcare industry, including the position of Network Analyst, Remote Systems Engineer and Consultant and Data Systems Engineer. Sterud holds Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from South Dakota State University in Brookings, SD. In 2011, he graduated from CIO Boot Camp at the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives. Sterud is a Certified Healthcare CIO and Certified Professional in Healthcare Information and Management Systems. He specializes in healthcare operations streamlining, enterprise resource planning, strategic planning and analytics, system planning and design, cross-functional collaboration, infrastructure solutions project management and security controls. CIO INSIGHTS
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