“Everything in IT is Digital”: CIO Donna Roach on Accelerating the Strategy

As CIOs continue to manage through perhaps the biggest health crises of our time, one of the biggest challenges is keeping an eye toward the future. “People are tired,” said Donna Roach, who stepped into the role just six months into the pandemic. “But you still have to carve out time to work on your strategy and where you need to be.” If leaders wait until things are more stabilized, it’ll be too late.

It’s a tough stance to take, particularly when it means asking busy clinicians for 30 minutes of precious time when they’ve already given so much. To Roach, however, it’s part of the job. And it’s one of the reasons why she has made relationship building a priority throughout her career.

Recently, Roach spoke with Kate Gamble, Managing Editor at healthsystemCIO, about her key priorities as CIO at University of Utah Health — many of which center on accelerating digital transformation. She also talked about the approach she took to get to know her team despite the limitations of Covid; what appealed to her most about the organization; and the one area in which healthcare has a lot of catching up to do.

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Key Takeaways



* The first step in developing a digital health strategy is to assess the environment. “We spent a lot of time just trying to understand what that means from a strategy side and how we want to engage on it.”

* One of the best practices University of Utah Health follows is to utilize an agile approach, “with quicker development cycles and less reliance on vendors.”

* Like any initiative, a digital strategy must be supported by a strong framework and architecture. Without those in place, “it’s going to fail.”

* Communication is a key aspect in getting all stakeholders on the same page and creating a unified approach to fulfilling the organizational roadmap, rather than having people “working in pockets.”

* The key to getting to know staff and colleagues in Zoom and Teams environment? “Don’t see it as a barrier,” said Roach. And “be purposeful about communication.”





Q&A with Donna Roach, CIO, University of Utah Health, Part 1

Gamble:  Hi Donna, thank you for joining us. I’d love to talk about what you’re doing at University of Utah Health, especially in terms of digital health. It’s so interesting to see how it has developed.

Donna:  I agree. It’s funny, I was told probably on day one, ‘We have a digital strategy that needs to be developed,’ and I said, ‘okay, no problem.’ It was going to be my project to run, along with the CMIO and other key stakeholders. So, they had already been going down that path.

When I asked, ‘what do you think digital means?’ they said, ‘It’s virtual care and telehealth.’ I said, ‘Okay, but you realize it’s much more than that. It’s a whole gamut of stuff.’ They said, ‘Yes, that’s why we want you to develop a strategy and a governing body.’ So that was good, because it assured me that we were on the same page that digital is more virtual care and telehealth.

Terminology becomes very interesting, and people can definitely get caught up with it. But really, everything in IT is digital; it’s just a name.

 

Representation across the organization

Gamble:  I’m sure it made a difference that the organization had already started thinking about it. What were your initial steps to get the digital strategy off the ground?

Roach:  The first part is assessing the environment. In an academic setting, it’s a little bit slower and a little more purposeful than what you would see in most organizations. And so,