Salvaging Value From Failed Health Technology Pilots: A Recovery-Oriented Approach

Evidence indicates that health information technology (HIT) pilots suffer from high rates of failure. While the best-case-scenario is for healthcare providers to proactively identify and mitigate risks to avoid predictable and preventable failures, a variety of factors ranging from conflicting leadership priorities and perspectives, lack of clarity about the problem being solved, and differing opinions about requirements, often result in new health information technologies being piloted in the clinical practice environment under less-than-ideal circumstances. When pilot failure appears imminent, we argue for healthcare providers adopting a pilot ‘recovery’ mindset focused on salvaging latent value from the pilot before abandonment and re-allocation of resources to other projects and priorities occurs. In this presentation, we present technical and workflow case examples based on our lived experience with SHC's Inpatient Ecosystem pilot project to illustrate how providers can salvage concrete empirical evidence from failed HIT pilots to drive clarity and consensus around functional, workflow, and technical requirements when introducing new HIT into the inpatient practice environment.