Causes of failure in Healthcare IT projects

Discuss (four to six) causes of project failure

 

Introduction

The usage of Info and communication Tech (ICT) in healthcare area is one of the main factors that aid in improving the services delivered to patients. The usages of ICT range from communications infrastructure including networks to advanced systems such as hospital information system (HIS), photo archiving and communication system (PACS), Emergency Room IT system, electronic medical records (EMR), Telemedicine, and others. (Abouzahra, 2011, p 45).

These methods/systems are typically a part of every new hospital particularly large scale hospitals. Projects engaged in either executing these systems or traveling from one systems to another are lengthy and difficult projects that need huge investments of money and knowledge in order to carry out them effectively. Professional project management is vital for the accomplishment of healthcare IT projects particularly projects requiring system integration such as HIS. These projects are typically managed utilizing Project Management Institute (PMI) standards as printed in the PMBOK guide. (Jiang, 2010, p 36).

 

Project failure is well-defined as failing to achieve the project goals in terms of project scope, schedule, or cost. As per Standish Chaos report for

2009, only 32% of IT projects achieve their goals, while 24%of IT projects completely fail and 44% have problems in achieving their objectives. This blog focus to compare the causes of failure in healthcare IT projects with those of other forms of projects. It is conducted by inspecting the causes of failure for 52 healthcare IT projects in Saudi Arabia between 2007 and 2011in some of the largest hospitals there. The budget of these projects ranged from 500,000 to 10 million US dollars. We will begin by debating the main causes of failure in projects, then we will argue the challenges facing healthcare IT projects. We monitor by displaying how the blog of healthcare IT projects was conducted, and the findings of this blog comparing the causes of project failure with those particular to healthcare IT. We conclude by offering guidelines to help in managing healthcare IT projects. (Spil, 1999, p 87).

Causes of Project failure

Blog shows that the interior factors in project failure requiring the project management operations and project team dynamics represent a larger cause for project failure than external factors requiring customer and other exterior entities. From the perspective of project management, there are numerous factors that may result to IT project failure. The key factors found to cause project failure are incomplete or unclear scope, failure to classify and engage stakeholders, communication issues and risk management issues. These factors drive to maximizing the number of variations in project, unsatisfaction of clients, poor ethics for the team members, problems in deliverables quality, stretched schedule, and maximized cost. As displayed, most of the problems engaged in project failure are linked to the planning stage of the project, the most popular reason behind project failure being unclear scope. (Croteau, 2002, p 38).

 

Challenges facing healthcare IT projects

Healthcare IT systems work in a great sensitive environment. This is due to the patient lives may rely on the suitable work of these systems. Hospitals are typically prepared with medical devices from dissimilar vendors. Many systems such as PACS require connecting with these equipment. This provide a challenge for healthcare projects because even though there are standard protocols to perform such communication such as DICOM, in most events special licenses require to be bought resulting in an growth in the cost and complexity of the project. (Sood, 2009, p 76).

 

The most severe challenge for healthcare IT projects is the necessity for combination between dissimilar, sometimes unpredictable, systems. Combination is a popular aspect in most healthcare IT projects. This is a straight finding of the dissimilar and varied sources of info in hospitals. Patients’ details come from one system, their X-rays come from another, and their laboratory findings come from a third one. Thus to get all info for a patient all these systems must be combined together. (Fengou, 2010, p 90).

More problems occur because in many events, the info contained in these systems are unpredictable and need more processing before the combination succeeds. Another main challenge facing healthcare projects is the diverse groups of stakeholders engaged in utilizing the system. Hospitals have diverse groups of users such as surgeons, nurses, counter clerk, patients, and visitors. All these groups may have requests and necessities in the system. Failing to achieve the necessities of the user groups or not engaging them in the projects can have a severe influence on project success. All these stated challenges have a certain effect on the project; failing to deal with any of these challenges can cause project failure. (Yong, 2007, p 24).

 

Conclusion

In my point of view, I think Failure Helps Us Overcome Fear. An entrepreneur loves success stories but freak out at the prospect of failure. Every person failure must be conflicted in the business in a good way, even if it has led it to be out of the market competition, there are often ways of getting back or beginning again in a boosted and strong vision.

 

Enjoy watching ..

 

References

Abouzahra, Mohamed. (2011). “Causes of failure in Healthcare IT projects”, Missouri University of Science and Technology.

J. Li, Y. Jiang, R. Fan. (2010). “Adoption of ICT at hospital: A case study of UMMC”, Proc. of 2010 International conference on electronic computer technology.

Spil, T.A.M.; Et al. (1999). “The definition, selection and implementation of a new hospital information system to prepare the hospital for the electronic future: an example of project based education”, Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

Yong-Jie Ni. Et al. (2007). “Implementation and Evaluation of A PQRM-based PACS System”, 6th International Special Topic Conference on Information Technology Applications in Biomedicine.

Fengou, M.-A.S. Et al. (2010). “A new telemedicine framework handling the emergency room overload”, 10th IEEE International Conference on Information Technology and Applications in Biomedicine.

Sood, S.P.; Et al. (2009). “Electronic Medical Records: A Review Comparing the Challenges in Developed and Developing Countries”, Proceedings of the 41st Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

Croteau, A.-M.; Vieru, D. (2002). “Telemedicine adoption by different groups of physicians”, Proceedings of the 35th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.