ICT investment plan for health

Following an internal review, this health organisation was recommended to undertake a massive and urgent upgrade of its ICT infrastructure.

The organisation accepted that significant investment was required if it were to deliver clinical and corporate information systems to points of care, as planned.

An ICT infrastructure investment plan was required. Its purpose was to be a guide to optimising investment in, and procurement and operation of the organisation’s ICT infrastructure and services.

For this immense ICT infrastructure program, Frame’s brief was to develop a capital investment plan as well as identify the annual operating expenditure that would result.

The ICT infrastructure investment plan, which Frame delivered, gave the organisation a view of the necessary investments that would be required over 10 years.

Equipped with knowledge of what ICT infrastructure investments were required to resolve the issues raised by the review, the organisation would be able to:

• take advantage of new technologies
• enable operational cost reduction
• adequately deliver clinical and corporate information systems.

The plan enabled the organisation to model various procurement strategies and their value-for-money benefits. Additionally, the model provided a distinct correlation between services delivered and ICT infrastructure provided so that the organisation could undertake per-service cost and operations modelling for distinct services or service groups.

Based on the thoroughness and quality of the plan, the organisation asked Frame to develop the business case. In it, Frame fully described the investments required for the initial 3-year budgetary cycle, leading to the business case being approved by the executive.

Frame’s challenge was to develop an ICT infrastructure investment plan in an environment where healthcare costs are rising rapidly due to advances in tools, techniques and treatments used to cure and prevent disease. The plan provided guidance for the organisation in terms of making strategic, operational and procurement decisions about ICT infrastructure.

Frame undertook a step-by-step approach so that stakeholders were fully engaged, consulted and informed throughout the process. This involved:

• in-depth requirements gathering
• developing and agreeing the procurement approach
• gaining CIO approval at each stage of the plan’s development
• developing an architecture model as the basis for cost modelling
• developing a detailed cost model based upon organisational design and geographic distribution, which made use of Frame’s deep understanding of vendor pricing models
• engaging stakeholders and ICT management in metropolitan and regional centres
• developing detailed documentation and managing the cycle for client review and approval.

Frame addressed key technology proposals within the plan. These included:

• enabling ICT to transform the way information is recorded and accessed by clinicians
• migrating obsolete PABX infrastructure to a VoiP telephony solution and replacing 90% of the analogue phones over the period
• considering a whole new service model for ICT infrastructure assets; for example, data storage.