CIO Corner: Supporting Growth with Technology

Earlier this year, Houston Methodist surpassed 30,000 employees. Construction is underway on both the Centennial Tower in the Texas Medical Center as well as our ninth hospital, located in Cypress. More than 1,000 additional providers are projected to join our physician organization by the end of the decade. Amidst all this expansion, it’s equally as important that our technology expands to support our growth and any innovations we plan to introduce for our patients and people.

Partners in innovation

As HM grows, IT is behind the scenes ensuring our processes, workflows, systems and technologies can support the growth. When innovations are considered, IT works with our operational partners and care teams throughout the planning process. We strive to ensure that all innovations meet our technology standards and can expand smoothly across all locations.

As our data needs grow and new innovations come online, the infrastructure behind those innovations — the wired and wireless networks that keep us connected and provide access to our data and applications — are evaluated, too, ensuring reliability and accessibility. Systems and applications are tested, adjusted and tested again before they are introduced more broadly. We also pilot them in select locations.

Scalable, available, reliable

Once we verify the viability of a technology, we explore how well our systems can support additional growth, users and demand. This is known as scalability. One way we’re addressing scalability is by moving to more cloud-based systems which put less demand on our physical networks. Moving data to the cloud means storing and accessing data and applications on servers located remotely on the internet instead of on personal computers or data centers. This makes our data available from anywhere with an internet connection, while at the same time reducing the need for physical storage space. Cloud computing also improves reliability, making sure we have access to our systems as we care for our patients. In the next 12-15 months, we’ll be moving Epic to the cloud for more reliability, and we’re evaluating other systems as well.

Keeping it secure

Another key factor as we grow is to make sure our systems stay secure from cyberattacks. Because HM relies on more than 600 applications for daily patient care, we regularly test them to ensure any potential vulnerabilities are uncovered and our patient data and systems stay secure. Each day our security team blocks one million attacks from getting through. You play a role in this, too, by reporting suspicious emails, never sharing your password, having different passwords for your personal and work life, using multifactor authentication and taking advantage of our secure, online forms.

Playing it safe

We access our patient data and applications via a network of servers which currently are stored in a data center in Houston. To improve HM’s resilience to regional disasters, in addition to moving to the cloud, we’re also migrating information from our Houston data center to two remote server locations. These remote data centers provide secure, reliable back-up options to guarantee continued access to our data.

Complementing growth

As we continue to welcome more patients and expand our physical space and team, we are taking a thoughtful and comprehensive approach to HM’s technology growth strategy. While you should never notice any difference, these improvements mean that our data remains accessible and well-protected from loss, corruption or cyber-theft. Our aim is to seamlessly integrate current operations with future innovations. We remain focused on this behind the scenes so that you can focus on providing unparalleled care to our patients, keeping them at the center of everything we do.