Bridging the Gap: How IT & Clinical Informatics Drive Healthcare Innovation

Aligning IT & Clinical Informatics for Better Patient Care

As healthcare technology evolves, clinical informatics teams are becoming essential partners in bridging IT and clinical operations. Their role is critical in aligning technology with patient care, optimizing workflows, and improving both provider satisfaction and operational efficiency.

Despite their value, collaboration between IT and clinical informatics teams is not always seamless. Challenges such as governance, project prioritization, and vendor selection can create friction—especially when responsibilities are not clearly defined. However, when IT and clinical informatics work in alignment, the result is technology that enhances patient care rather than disrupts it.

This blog explores how healthcare leaders are successfully integrating IT and clinical informatics, prioritizing projects, managing technology implementation, and optimizing vendor selection to create a more effective healthcare system.

Defining Clinical Informatics: A Vital IT Partner

Clinical informatics is the essential bridge between IT and clinical staff, ensuring technology enhances rather than disrupts patient care. These teams oversee workflows within EHRs, optimize nursing documentation, pharmacy systems, and refine order sets to improve efficiency.

Unlike IT teams, clinical informaticists focus on how technology is used in practice, ensuring that systems are tailored to real-world healthcare workflows. This partnership ensures that technology solutions are both technically sound and clinically effective.

“We see our clinical informaticist as a crucial partner in delivering technology solutions to the care settings.”  

-Wesley Jayroe, Director of Enterprise Applications

Some programs foster collaboration that enables doctors to earn certifications for configuring their EHR systems. By giving providers more control over system design, organizations can improve user adoption, reduce provider burnout, and enhance patient care.

How IT & Clinical Informatics Collaborate

One of the biggest challenges in healthcare IT project management is ensuring that IT and clinical informatics teams are aligned in their priorities. Because these teams operate under different reporting structures, determining which projects take precedence can be complex.

Healthcare organizations typically prioritize projects based on three key factors:

• Patient Safety – Does this initiative prevent harm or improve clinical workflows?
• Quality of Care – Will this technology enhance treatment effectiveness?
• Financial Impact – Can this solution reduce costs, streamline operations, or generate revenue?

Larger healthcare systems often pilot new technologies at a single facility before rolling them out system-wide. Smaller organizations may rely on business planning teams to assess vendor solutions, integration challenges, and enterprise-wide alignment.

Managing Technology Implementation & Training

Defining Roles & Responsibilities

A major challenge in rolling out new technology is establishing clear responsibilities between IT and clinical informatics teams. Clearly defining roles between IT and clinical informatics is essential to prevent miscommunication and workflow disruptions.

IT leads system installation, integration, and support, while clinical informatics ensures staff adoption and workflow alignment. However, in areas like training and troubleshooting, close collaboration is necessary to ensure seamless implementation.

For example, when introducing a new bedside communication tool, IT may handle hardware setup and system configuration, while clinical informatics focuses on how and when clinicians should use it during patient care. If these roles are not defined upfront, staff may receive mixed messages, slowing adoption and reducing efficiency.

To improve role clarity, organizations are:

• Developing governance documents to outline specific responsibilities for IT and clinical informatics.
• Using agile project management to allow for continuous collaboration and process adjustments.
• Aligning training efforts so that technical and clinical expertise are both incorporated into onboarding new technology.

By defining ownership early, hospitals can ensure smoother technology rollouts, minimize confusion, and enhance staff adoption.

Tiered Training for New Technology

Successful technology rollouts require a structured training approach that ensures users are fully prepared. Many healthcare organizations follow a tiered training model, which includes:

• Pre-launch education – Web-based learning modules, tip sheets, and overview sessions.
• Hands-on training – Clinical informatics teams providing on-site support.
• Post-launch rounding – Continuous feedback and troubleshooting after implementation.

For large-scale projects—such as EHR upgrades—hospitals often provide "elbow support" from trained superusers. These bedside nurses receive advanced training before go-live so they can assist their peers in real time, ensuring a smoother transition.

Vendor Selection & Governance: Ensuring the Right Fit

Selecting the right vendor is one of the most critical decisions healthcare organizations make. The wrong choice can lead to inefficiencies, poor adoption, and increased costs, while the right vendor can improve workflows, enhance patient care, and streamline operations.

To ensure the best fit, organizations should consider:

• Industry reputation and peer feedback – Engaging with other healthcare organizations that have implemented the solution can reveal hidden challenges or unexpected benefits. Many rely on KLAS research, peer networks, and reference clients to validate vendor capabilities.
• Service level agreements (SLAs) and response times – A great product means nothing if support is lacking. Hospitals need SLAs that outline clear uptime guarantees, resolution commitments, and emergency support—especially for mission-critical systems like EHRs and patient monitoring tools.
• Cost versus long-term value – Upfront pricing may be attractive, but hospitals must consider the total cost of ownership (including training, implementation, and scalability). A cheaper vendor may create more long-term expenses if integration and usability issues arise.
• Scalability across multiple facilities – A vendor that works well for a single hospital may struggle to support a multi-hospital system. Organizations must assess whether the solution can handle large-scale deployments, system integrations, and enterprise-wide standardization.

“Reference clients are really important. If a solution works well in a two-hospital system, that doesn’t mean it will scale across 180 hospitals. Comparing yourself to an organization that is similar to yours is critical.”  

-Valere Lemon, Division Director of Clinical Informatics

By taking a proactive, enterprise-wide approach to vendor selection, hospitals can avoid redundant purchases, reduce costs, and ensure seamless system integration.

Financial Pressures & Cost Optimization

With financial pressures mounting, healthcare organizations are prioritizing cost optimization. A key strategy is application rationalization, which eliminates redundant IT expenses.

Hospitals are achieving this by:

• Consolidating overlapping software solutions to minimize vendor sprawl.
• Standardizing EHR platforms to improve efficiency across acquired hospitals.
• Reviewing vendor contracts annually to ensure competitive pricing and SLAs.

IT teams and clinical informatics groups must work together to evaluate whether existing solutions can meet new needs before purchasing additional software. By taking a proactive, enterprise-wide approach to software selection, hospitals can reduce costs, streamline IT operations, and improve system usability.

The Path Forward: Strengthening IT & Clinical Informatics Collaboration

When IT and clinical informatics teams work in alignment, healthcare organizations experience smoother technology adoption, improved provider satisfaction, and better patient care.

By clearly defining priorities, establishing transparent roles, optimizing training strategies, and carefully evaluating vendor partnerships, hospitals can maximize their technology investments and drive long-term innovation.

To hear more expert insights, listen to our related podcast episode, where industry leaders discuss how IT and clinical informatics teams can collaborate effectively to improve technology adoption and patient care.