Achieving success: assessing the role of and building a business case for technology in healthcare.

As the healthcare market continues to evolve, technology will play an increasingly important role in an integrated delivery system's ability to provide high-quality, cost-effective care. Healthcare leaders must be proactive and forward thinking about their technology investments. The financial investment for technology innovation can be significant. Therefore, it is important that healthcare executives deliberately design the role of technology and develop a consistent method for evaluating, identifying, and prioritizing technology investments. The article begins by describing technology's role in a healthcare organization as a window to the organization, a key driver of business strategy, and a high-performance enabler, and it develops a seven-step process for building a business case to ensure that an organization's technology investments are wise, well-reasoned, and will provide value to its customers. In addition, the article discusses the importance of combining people and process reengineering with new technology to exponentially increase the value to an organization. Healthcare leaders must understand the multiple roles of technology and consistently develop a business case when making technology investment decisions. Organizations driven by such an understanding will have a robust infrastructure of enabling technology designed to integrate people and process elements with technology to achieve the goals and initiatives of the organization. These organizations will lead the healthcare industry into the next millennium.