Poor IT culture, not infrastructure, is the root cause of health IT problems

Digital innovation is seen as the solution to many pressing healthcare problems. Yet digital technology is responsible for cyber attacks, lack of interoperability, slow log-ins, multiple passwords, patient safety incidents, lost patient data, huge costs, and more. Digital technology itself underlies many healthcare problems.If an IT outage seems to be caused by inadequate IT infrastructure,1 that inadequacy has an underlying cause in poor engineering. And that poor engineering was caused by poor culture that overlooked the need for competent engineering expertise in the first place. Bringing in an innovative digital solution won’t fix these problems.Digital engineering is a sophisticated discipline, covering theory, development skills, standards compliance, testing, evaluation, maintenance, interdisciplinary teamwork, user centred design, and much more. Almost nobody in digital healthcare has up-to-date professional qualifications appropriate to the complexity and critical problems that arise in digital healthcare. That digital policies are made by people with limited digital competency is…
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