Business Week

The Battle to Streamline Business Software


Simplification -- using fewer suppliers and fewer packages to cut overall costs -- is rapidly becoming an issue that unites all CIOs. Each year, more than 150,000 patients pass through the doors of Oregon Health & Sciences University in Portland, a leading teaching hospital and dental clinic. Keeping track of all of them is the job of John Kenagy, the hospital's chief information officer -- and his is no easy task: OHSU uses 200 different software packages to admit, track, and bill patients. If that isn't complex enough, many of those programs are unable to communicate with each other. "Data integration is a huge problem in the health-care industry," says Kenagy. "If I'm seeing a cancer doctor, and three weeks later I show up at the emergency room, my records have to show up in that department too."