I-MED Network chief information officer, Bart Dekker.
Bart Dekker has been chief information officer of Sydney-based private medical diagnostic imaging group, I-MED Network, for seven years. During that time he has been responsible for a number of e-health services including the creation of an x-ray application for the iPad which allows its doctors to view x-ray images and patient documents on their devices.
What does an average work day involve for you at I-MED?
I-MED has 200 diagnostic imaging clinics and is an organisation whose workflow is very dependent upon IT. Out of necessity and design, we also use IT to differentiate ourselves from our competition so a large part of my day is spent discussing how we can improve IT service delivery.
This encompasses discussions with our state IT managers and staff to further automate our systems to improve the end user experience. It also allows our IT staff to focus their time on adding more value to our business processes through technological enablement, instead of fixing faults.
What are some of the major challenges you face in the role of CIO?
Like many organisations, there is the constant pressure to do more with less, so we are always looking at ways we can further improve our service delivery through automation and reducing the costs of keeping the lights on. This also helps us meet the needs of our doctors, customers and staff by allowing our IT staff to focus more on business processes and enabling technology to assist in achieving business outcomes.
Over the last few years, with all of the emphasis on e-health and the benefits this provides for improved patient outcomes, a key challenge is ensuring our IT systems are agile and can be quickly changed to incorporate the rapid change that is occurring in our industry.
What are some of the major projects you have been working on?
During the course of this year, we have been working on a number of key projects including:
- The development of potential e-health and telemedicine offerings
- Our second generation referrer portal which includes a number of facilities to improve access to diagnostic imaging results for referrers and other medical service providers, and a significant amount of backend infrastructure upgrades and expansions to support this service
- Rolling out our voice over IP (VoIP) telephone system
- The second phase of our asset management and service contract management system
- Key upgrades of functionality for the clinical systems used by our doctors and clinical staff.
What are the three biggest issues facing CIOs today?
Many of the issues facing IT today are also opportunities to help differentiate the services we can provide to our customers. These issues include consumerisation of IT such as Cloud computing, the need to become more agile and change management when IT services are consumed not only internally, but also by your customers.
What is your favourite gadget?
I am enjoying my Kindle e-reader and lap counting swimming watch.
Follow Hamish Barwick on Twitter: @HamishBarwick
Follow CIO Australia on Twitter: @CIO_Australia
Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.