Within the last year, healthcare CIOs learned in that one of their biggest challenges is to keep up with and drive change within their organizations. In a post to Healthcare IT News, Pamela Dixon and Steve Nilsen, of recruiting firm SSi-Search, gave their tips for how to lead effectively and dynamically, which include:
- Interconnectivity: Leaders need to understand how to engage themselves at the "synapse or flow of information," according to Dixon and Nilsen. CIOs, they say, must be nimble and interact with others in a "non-linear" fashion.
- Innovation: "The phrase 'innovate or die' has a new ring of truth to it," Dixon and Nilsen write. Innovation will grow to be even more important in 2014, as organizations add chief innovation officer positions and it becomes part of healthcare's overall strategy.
"Synaptic leadership," Dixon and Nilsen say, "is a term that describes the ability to manage and consolidate information that is being sent and received simultaneously across complex organizations and needed by multiple individuals for a wide variety of purposes."
A HIMSS Analytics report published in February found that the top priorities for health information technology executives in the next two years are not just closely tied to governmental mandates. Managing the exponential propagation of data, which could cause unexpected security problems, also is keeping health IT executives up at night.
Hiring for new IT positions also will be a priority for CIOs this year, according to Bonnie Siegel, a healthcare IT recruiter for Witt/Kieffer. Some of those roles include: data scientists, analytics experts, chief information security officers (particularly in light of the recent Target data breach), chief applications officers, heads of digital technology and social media and chief applications officers.
To learn more:
- see the post in Healthcare IT News