Response to CIO Magazine Article – Why you need more than one software vendor

I posted this response at CIO.com in response to an article surrounding the need for more than one software vendor.  Text of response is below.

READER FEEDBACK

Spencer Hamons Tue, 2008-01-15 17:09

Although I agree with some points made here regarding negotiation position and the relatively small number of large software vendors available, I take issue with just stating that this is the best strategy.

This may well be the best strategy for organizations with mature enought IT departments capable of handling the complexity multiple vendors involves. It is also dependent upon the business of the organization and the risk tolerance and what data integrity means to the specific organization.

For example, I am the CIO of a hospital, and if I encounter a data integration problem that happens to result in some clinical data from one patient being transposed to another patient, I don’t have an upset customer on the end of the support line for an online order they placed. I have the potential for adverse drug interactions, incorrect lab or radiology data, or even death resulting from mistreatment. These are risks that I am not willing to take for the sake of a negotiation advantage. Likewise, if my IT staff were 250 employees capable of monitoring each and every HL7 transaction, my risk tolerance would be different than it is currently with my 10 IT staff members. Additionally, in healthcare, I never have the luxury of taking the entire system down for 24 hours over the weekend…not even a portion of the system. In a 24×7 operation, care must be taken on how do you keep systems active and functioning day and night. If a data integrity problem erupts, for the safety of our patients, we have to take systems off-line. With “one throat to choke”, combined with good contract metrics, the vendor is motivated to resolve our problems quickly rather that point fingers at integration points.

This is a topic that will be discussed on an upcoming podcast at ITPodcast.org for anyone in the healthcare industry (or interested in the healthcare industry) that would like to listen in.