For many health-care CIOs, it's never been as exciting a time to work in information technology. That's because the health-care industry, after years of being labeled a technology laggard, is being pushed like never before to transform itself through the use of IT. In recent months, heavy-hitting power brokers, from President Bush and members of Congress to leaders in medicine, have spotlighted and promoted the immense potential IT has to reduce health-care costs and improve quality of care.

"There isn't a morning I wake up that I don't say, 'It's going to be a hell of a day,'" says John Hummel, CIO of Sutter Health, which is among this year's most innovative InformationWeek 500 health-care companies. "My IT employees aren't making widgets, they're saving people's lives," says Hummel, whose ongoing technology focus at Sutter is on giving clinicians and doctors electronic access to information that can improve patient care and efficiencies and avoid fatal medical errors.

Health IT got one of its biggest endorsements in April when Bush set out the goal for most Americans to have electronic health records within 10 years. Bush created a subcabinet health-IT czar position--since filled by Dr. David Brailer--to help achieve that ambition. Not to be outdone, Democratic presidential contender John Kerry's campaign says it's his goal for every American to have an electronic health record within four years. The push is in large part because of the Institute of Medicine's estimates that widespread deployment of IT could help eliminate tens of thousands of deaths and injuries caused by medical mistakes every year.

Regardless of who wins the fight for the White House in November, the message is clear and the pressure is on: The traditionally slow-to-change health-care industry must continue to ramp up its IT efforts. While the government's attention to IT in health care is putting E-health records, computerized physician order-entry systems, and E-prescribing on the radar at hospitals and physicians' offices, it also raises the competitive ante for the most forward-looking health-care companies.

St. Joseph Health System, a nonprofit organization that operates hospitals in California, Texas, and New Mexico, is undergoing a $150 million comprehensive clinical transformation centered on IT. The transformation, which focuses on providing doctors, nurses, and caregivers with ubiquitous, secure electronic access to patient information, includes the rollout of electronic medical records, nurses' clinical documentation, computerized physician order-entry, and picture-archiving systems.

	St. Joseph's tech rollout includes electronic records, order-entry, and picture archiving, CIO Williams says. Photo by Sacha Lecca

St. Joseph is already about 2-1/2 years into its transformation, which is expected to continue over the next six or seven years. The project, called Care ReDesign, is the company's biggest investment since it earmarked $500 million to retrofit its California hospitals to comply with state-mandated earthquake requirements, says Larry Stofko, St. Joseph's VP of IT strategy and innovation.

So far, St. Joseph's largest in-patient rollout of Care ReDesign is at its 300-bed St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, Calif. The best practices, change management, and workflow lessons learned there will carry over into implementations at its other hospitals. "Physicians and clinicians realize that wherever they practice medicine, this is the way it will be in the future," says Stofko, who says the transformation at St. Joseph has relied heavily on input from doctors and nurses. "Without managing expectations and relationships, this wouldn't happen," adds St. Joseph CIO Ben Williams.