Consider a common scenario where one employee in a healthcare facility downloads their “must-have” application while another employee uses their favorite application that performs nearly the same function. Multiply this situation across an organization and the extra “bloat” may encompass hundreds of redundant applications, each of which must be managed and tracked to meet HIPAA compliance and security standards.
To help healthcare practices and hospitals manage their costs and reduce potential security vulnerabilities, Pixel Health performs a service called application “app” rationalization. This detailed evaluation offers several benefits as part of an IT governance process.
1. Understanding—and eliminating—extra costs
As part of the app rationalization discovery process, all applications are documented, including any redundant or underutilized applications, along with the total cost of each application and any associated burden with their maintenance. This process helps business leaders and IT teams make informed decisions about current gaps and determine which applications could be phased out, consolidated, or re-evaluated to direct resources to the most essential applications.
2. Making recommendations for the best application
As a healthcare IT company solely focused on healthcare, Pixel Health is often asked by its clients to evaluate competing priorities, provide recommendations on which applications to keep or retire, and help secure buy-in from both end users and leadership. Several factors are considered when evaluating applications, such as the current users’ needs, known security issues, ongoing requirements for patching/updates, hosting/storage options (such as cloud-based, hybrid, or SaaS), and how the application fits into the organization’s existing IT infrastructure.
3. Reducing security risks
Each application in an organization can represent a security risk if not properly managed and maintained. By reducing their total number of applications and eliminating any redundant or legacy technology, an organization is better equipped to stay up to date with the latest security requirements.
4. Incorporating best practices
The app rationalization practice can be eye-opening to many organizations that didn’t realize the extent of their overlapping applications—and the security risks that any unmanaged application can present to their IT infrastructure. As a result, new policies and processes may be developed to carefully vet future requests for application downloads, check for potential redundancies, and ensure the IT team can support new strategic products as well as maintain their current IT portfolio.
5. Streamlining IT infrastructure
Once an organization has performed app rationalization, evaluated the effectiveness of its applications, and finalized the consolidation process, it should feel confident that its IT team can streamline processes, focus on business-critical functions, and better manage each application across its lifecycle to ultimately create more value for the organization.
Click here to learn how Pixel Health can help healthcare organizations optimize their resource allocation through application rationalization as part of our comprehensive IT solutions.
