Assignment: Please respond to each Colleague with 1-2 paragraphs.
Review your classmates’ posts from earlier in the week and provide comments to at least two of your colleagues. Your response to your colleagues should include your perspectives on each of the following:
· Provide insights you gained about how organizations can use technology and business information systems to promote positive change at the organizational level, the local community, or on a global scale.
· Examine how the trends identified by your colleague could affect your professional or personal practices or an organization or industry with which you are familiar. What opportunities might there be?
· Share your insights about the trends identified by your colleague, and offer additional ideas about the effect they might have and challenges that could occur.
· Expand upon the trends presented by your colleague, and offer other opportunities, solutions, or implications that your colleague may not have shared.
1st Colleague to respond to:
Technology is utilized everywhere and is transforming the way we operate. Business information systems use technology to drive their strategic goals and stay competitive in their market. Technology and innovation are changing at rapid rates, and business strategies need to be aligned with IT strategies to be sustainable. Organizations create large amounts of data that need to be stored. Data can help shape the decisions made by organizations. I have gained new knowledge from this course, and one of the most important things I learned is that data needs to be stored, and there are many different mechanisms to accomplish this. Each data storage system can be utilized differently and has its own set of issues. Data storage systems vary from the cloud, to flash storage systems, persistent memory-based solutions, and automated data management. Problems with privacy can arise from data storage systems. According to Spiceworks (2020), only 31% of businesses feel comfortable storing their data on the cloud. Other issues with data storage systems are compatibility, volume, cost, and integrity. This surprised me the most. I was unaware that data could be stored on many different platforms, and that each one could have potential issues associated with it. The reason I chose this as one of the most important lessons learned is that I work in the Operating Room, and technology and innovation drive our business. Surgeries are changing rapidly; new devices are coming out to aid surgeons in taking care of patients. Navigation is essential in helping neurosurgeons find tumors. They upload patient information to the cloud to access and share. Patient privacy needs to be maintained; hospitals need to have good firewalls in place to protect from cyberattacks. My hospital also uses Electronic Health records to chart patient information. It is crucial to be able to protect against cyberattacks as data breaches frequently attack healthcare industries (Matthews, 2020). As a leader, it is vital to understand how your data is stored and how it is being protected. The second most important trend I learned about is driving value from business information systems.
Business strategies and IT strategies need to align and help to move organizations forward. Data can help drive strategic goals, as long as leaders understand how to read the data and drive change from the results. According to Beath, Becerra-Fernandez, Ross, & Short (2012), most of the data companies collect and analyze appears unstructured, located in spreadsheets, images, and videos, and cannot be easily accessed or interpreted. Only a few organizations understand how to drive results from their data (Beath, Becerra-Fernandez, Ross, & Short (2012). I selected this as I work in the Operating Room as a leader, and data drives our strategic goals. We focus on metrics like first case on-time starts and turn over times. We use data to help create action items to help us be more efficient, and we must understand how to read it. Understanding how to interrupt data can help me run the Operating Room more efficiently and utilize the resources to their fullest extent. This will increase work-life balance for staff, and physicians, and enhance the patient experience.
Healthcare is becoming more innovative, and technology is changing the way physicians treat patients. One major trend in healthcare is the concept of digital health. Wearables are a growing market. They connect to the intranet and deliver data about a patient’s health care status. By 2022, it is estimated that 67 million of the population will be wearing them (Hampel, 2020). This provides clinical data, lab data, social and economic data, and geographics (Hampel, 2020). This will affect how we diagnose, treat, and deliver healthcare. Hospital organizations need to shift gears and become more proactive than reactive to patients’ conditions. The second trend in business systems is Artificial Intelligence. Artificial Intelligence is becoming more widely used in hospital settings. EHR (Electronic Health Records) are the preferred method for documenting patients’ medical information and has some risk of being hacked. Artificial Intelligence can tell you if a medical record is being utilized for not it’s intended purpose. According to Hampel (2020)AI is becoming easier to use and more available in healthcare, which will continue to grow in 2020. As we move more to a digital platform in hospitals to document, share patient’s results, and drive outcomes, AI will need to be at the forefront of innovation and technology.
Business information systems and IT systems need to be aligned to move organizations forward. Business creates data, and data can help establish strategic goals. Companies need to stay on top of technology trends, or they will be left behind. UnitedHealthcare is an excellent example of an organization combining technology with business strategies. They devote 3 billion dollars annually on data and technology to reduce healthcare costs, increase the patient experience, and deliver better patient outcomes (Unitedhealthcare, 2019). They are developing programs like the Health4me app, precheck myscript, and UnitedHealthcare Motion, to name a few. These programs are utilizing technology and innovation to place decisions about a patient’s healthcare in their own hands, to drive down cost and increase satisfaction. Together business systems and IT systems can drive results; the more they work together, the better the organization will be.
References
Beath, C., Becerra-Fernandez, I., Ross, J., & Short, J. (2012). Finding value in the information explosion. MIT Sloan Management Review, 53(4), 18-20.
Hampel, S. (2020). 9 Technology Megatrends for health care in 2020. Health IT outcomes.
Matthews, K. (2020). 3 Healthcare Cybersecurity trends to watch in 2020. HIT Consultant.
Spiceworks (2020). Data Storage trends in 2020 and beyond. Spiceworks.com
UnitedHealthcare (2019). Innovating to remove complexity, control costs. UnitedHealthcare.com
2nd Colleague to respond to:
Describe 3 of the most important things you learned from the course
The three most important things I learned from the course include the application of technology and business information systems, technological trends in business, and the impact of these trends on the market. I learned that the use of technologies, particularly firewalls in commercials, has enhanced data security and privacy by preventing unauthorized user access. In this regard, sensitive and most relevant data of business entities, particularly strategic plans, and financial records, are adequately protected from unauthorized access by nonmembers. Additionally, I learned that technological trends in social media and cloud services have positively impacted many businesses by enhancing the dissemination of information for their products and services (Drnevich & Croson, 2013).
What surprised you most about what you learned?
The technological trends in business are what surprised me the most from the three essential things that I learned from the course. Although all the technological trends, such as social media, big data, and cloud services, are growing faster in business, it is not easy to pinpoint any of them as quicker than others (Ritz & Bevins, 2010).
Identify and discuss two trends in business information systems that you think will have a significant impact on your organization’s business model.
Social media and cloud computing services are the two trends in business information systems that I think will have a significant impact on businesses today. Social media platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Snap chat have much-helped businesses ease the advertisements of their products and services at cheaper costs. Most significantly, social media is accessed by people all over the world, whereby business entities have been able to reach out to their clients. More so, social media has aided in the sharing of information amongst employees, helping to improve decision-making processes (Barret, 2011). Additionally, cloud computing in business information systems will reduce the operational costs of business entities during the process of managing and maintaining information systems. As such, entities will make use of cloud computing resources providers instead of buying complex, expensive equipment for their inbuilt information systems such as new software and hardware. More so, the servicing fees of business information systems will be included in the cloud computing services, whereby the cloud-computing resource providers will automatically update the policy. As such, the business information system will be updated with up to date technologies on the market, such as newer software versions at relatively low costs (Grover & Kettinger, 1997).
Explain how organizations can employ technology and business information systems to promote positive social change within the organization
Technologies, particularly cloud computing, can help organizations to create a collaborative environment for its employees through mutual communications and information sharing during the execution of projects. Organizations may assign their employees to collaboratively execute their projects while working online in distinct areas through support from cloud computing technology. As such, all team members may be able to access and share information about the assigned projects to meet organizational goals. Most significantly, creating cloud computing models can help support the sharing of feedback about the project with employers without prior consideration of location (Turulja & Bajgori?, 2020). Additionally, the use of social media platforms the organization can create a free communication environment between the administrators, employees, and customers within and outside the business premises. As such, the customers can inquire directly to the business organization about the available products and services through social media platforms. Such a process is likely to enhance the customer experience and loyalty, as the needs of clients are likely to be adequately fulfilled by the organization through social networking interactions. On the other hand, the organization will tend to be more productive and competitive due to the creation of a wider market for their products and services through social media (Thamhain, 2010).
References:
Barret, K. (2011). Inside Business: Focus on Technology Companies: Central Penn Business Journal, cpbjnow.com, p.17-19
Drnevich, P.L., & Croson, D.C. (2013). Information Technology and Business-Level Strategy: Toward an Integrated Theoretical Perspective: MIS Quarterly Vol. 37 No. 2, pp. 483-509
Grover, V., & Kettinger, W.J. (1997). Special Section: The Impacts of Business Process Change on Organizational Performance: Journal of Management Information Systems I Summer, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 9-12
Ritz, J.M., & Bevins, P.S (2010). Economies, Innovations, Technology, and Engineering Education: The Connections. The Journal of Technology Studies; p.90-104
Thamhain, H.J. (2010). Critical Success Factors for Managing Technology-Intensive Teams in the Global Enterprise: Engineering Management Journal, Vol.23 No.3, p.30-36
Turulja, L., & Bajgori?, N. (2020). Being Prepared for Disaster? Implementation of Business Continuity Planning Concept in B&H Organizations. p.448-459
