“… Health IT leaders from the departments of Health and Human Services and Veterans Affairs, as well as the Defense Health Agency, reflected on their agencies’ progress this past year and how they want to move forward in 2022 with continuing and new IT initiatives during the FedHealthIT 100 Awards event this month…”
“The Food and Drug Administration’s tech chief said the agency needs at least 30% of its annual budget to fund growth and transformation to meet business needs. Today, only less than 10% of its budget is available for that.”
“Without running up budget costs by leveling out or decreasing operating and management costs, CIO Vid Desai said that he wants to reach that 30% goal to growth. To strike this balance, FDA is pursuing cloud modernization that isn’t just a “lift and shift…”
“The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is also pursuing IT modernization that reduces technological complexities and burden. Like Desai, CMS CIO Rajiv Uppal is focused on shifting processes, not just technology.”
“While Uppal emphasized that the cloud is the future of IT modernization at CMS, human-centered design, DevSecOps and shortening the authorization-to-operate process are steps that will ease the process.
“It’s not just about reign of building new technologies and new systems, but doing it in a way that we’re also improving the way the process is,” Uppal said. “Using human-centered design, for example, that’s been one of our major focus areas also…”
“We’re going to have to understand that the role of digital should always be around two things,” Vega said about digitalization at VA. “Increasing accessibility — but we need to embrace it to tackle certain inequities in care. There’s an opportunity for us to really utilize the ability to connect patients who work early or have trouble accessing or connecting to the health system…”
“Defense for Health Affairs Acting Assistant Secretary Dr. Terry Adirim, who will move to VA’s EHR Modernization Office as the new program executive director, added that the agencies will also look toward data system optimization amid the ongoing EHR effort within VA and DOD…” Read the full article here.
Source: Fed Health IT Officials Highlight 2022 Priorities – By Melissa Harris, December 28, 2021. GovernmentCIO.
