As technology continues to advance, the benefits of improved healthcare globally also continue to be realised.

However, the healthcare industry is a pace behind most of its peers in adopting these innovative and hugely beneficial technological advancements. The focus of the past few years has been on the adoption of an increasing level of clinical, patient focused technology. The use of administrative technology can have a direct result in reducing clinical risk and improving patient care, though it appears not to have gathered significant momentum, despite the many offerings in the market.

One of the major reasons behind this unwillingness to adopt innovative administrative technology is the perception about the sheer scale of the implementation required and the project management associated with it. Somehow the industry has been duped into the global myth, that in order to achieve any advancements in improving hospital technology, the implementation resource drain on the hospital is enormous and long winded. This does not need to be case.

Over many years the area of project management has been stereotyped by the introduction of project management certification, set project management methodologies and the bureaucracies that these introduce. This in turn has led to most vendors packaging up their contracts with large scale implementation plans, spread out over years and requiring huge resources from the client to support these plans, including the associated costs of those resources.

How have we got to the stage where project management is more about pushing paperwork around, and verifying project management course certificates, than it is about the quality and delivery of the project itself? Noting, approximately 70% of all project managers (across all industries) globally do not have a specific project management certification.

While the core elements of project delivery remain the same, companies in our industry can and should be innovative in their project implementation approach and not be required to adhere to a strict ‘so called’ project management rulebook. Being innovative, means focusing on the key elements of project delivery;

• Client management
• Quality control and 
• Timeline management

Being innovative is about reducing the high level of excess documentation, project meetings, corporate shading and most importantly reducing timelines for delivery.

IT project implementations in Healthcare do not need to be long drawn out projects with excessive drain of resources from the client. They can be streamlined, efficient and still be delivered with high quality.

All you need, is to be innovative in your project management and be confident in your innovation.

Maeve Noonan - Former Chief Operations Officer, Sláinte Healthcare