BEAUMONT HOSPITAL in Dublin could become a flagship medical facility by bringing best-practice technologies to bear on 21st-century healthcare in Ireland, according to Martin Curley, global director of IT innovation at Intel.
“It could be the tip of a spear that drives value for money for IT in our hospitals and lead the way on how technology can be used to transform healthcare in the State,” he said.
Mr Curley was speaking at the annual IT Capability Maturity Framework conference in NUI Maynooth, in his capacity as one of the founders of a programme that helps organisations get more value out of their IT investments.
In the past three years, more than 300 senior IT executives from over 20 countries have been trained in the framework, run out of the Innovation Value Institute at the university.
Martin McCormack, ICT director of IC at Beaumont, has been involved in the programme since February and believes it offers significant benefits over other methodologies.
“A lot of the other IT frameworks are excessively technical in detail and don’t speak to other business leaders in the organisation,” he said.
“Rather than focus on measuring the success of IT investment through system uptime or faster processing speeds, it looks at business value and guides you to benefits realisation.”
These are precisely the principles that stand Beaumont in good stead as it battles to do more with less in the face of public spending cuts. The challenge is compounded in the post-PPARS world where every government IT investment is closely scrutinised.
“I am acutely aware of where things can go wrong and the importance of best-practice management around IT projects,” said Mr McCormack. “We benchmark ourselves against the best of what’s out there in the world and bring it in to the hospital.”
As part of the IT-CMF, an audit of the organisation takes place and a representative sample of stakeholders is measured to test attitudes to IT.
Mr Curley said: “There is a perception that the public sector can’t be entrepreneurial and agile but what we’ve observed with Martin and his team is a willingness to excel and change.”
Can Beaumont hope to innovate in a climate of cost-cutting and reduced investment? “Even if your spending is limited, there are best practices to help you do more with the same or less money,” he added.
“The IT-CMF is about leveraging IT budgets to get the maximum value, by reducing operating costs and putting any money saved back into the business to support innovation and transformational outcomes.”
He said this model had already been successful in the UK public sector.
Westminster City Council was an early technology adopter that created a benchmark for other county councils to follow. “Something similar could happen in Ireland with Beaumont.”
