January 2009 FEATURE ARTICLES
The Healthcare CIO
IT Winners and Losers in 2009
By John Halamka, M.D.
I was recently asked to predict IT Winners and Losers in 2009. Rather than name individual companies, I’d like to highlight categories:
Winners
Electronic Health Record (EHR)
vendors, especially Web-based applications:
The Obama administration has promised $50 billion for
interoperable EHRs.
Software as a Service (SaaS) providers: SaaS providers offer lower cost of ownership and faster implementation than traditional software installation approaches.
Open Source: I’m embracing open source operating systems, databases and applications as long as they can provide the reliability and supportability that I need.
Green IT: Winners will be innovative techniques to adjust power draw, such as idle drive management, CPU voltage adjustments and high efficiency power supplies.
Cloud Computing Offerings: These are remote infrastructure utilities such as storage and high performance computing.
Losers
Client Server Applications: The cost of deploying, supporting and maintaining client server applications is no longer affordable.
Proprietary Operating Systems: I’m eliminating Solaris, AIX and HP-UX from my data centers.
High-end SAN storage: I find that 90 percent of my storage needs are met with lower end SAN, NAS and appliances that use low cost, high density drives (SAS and SATA).
Devices that do not offer energy efficient operations.
Applications that require a specific operating system or a specific browser on the client side: To be successful in 2009, applications should be operating system neutral, browser neutral and easily hosted as a service accessible via the Web.
John Halamka, M.D., is CIO of the CareGroup
Health System and CIO/Dean for Technology at Harvard
Medical School, and is on HMT’s Editorial Advisory Board.
Contact him at jhalamka@caregroup.harvard.edu .