HIT strategic plan: seven components for your company

The seven components are listed in a deliberate order and the first two carry the whole plan. A statement of corporate goals comes before a statement of HIT goals because a strategic technology plan is one that serves the organisation's stated direction; if your HIT goals could be lifted into any other company's plan unchanged, they are a wish list rather than a strategy. So write the corporate goals first, concretely and for a real organisation you can describe, and then derive each HIT goal from a specific corporate one. If a corporate goal is to reduce readmissions, the HIT goal is the analytics and care-transition capability that supports it. That traceability is also what makes the third component answerable, because priorities for the applications portfolio are decided by which corporate goal each application serves and how urgently, rather than by which system is oldest or which department asked most loudly for attention.

The middle components are where vagueness usually creeps in, so be concrete. Architecture and infrastructure means naming the shape of the estate — hosting model, the core clinical or operational systems, integration approach, the interoperability standards you will require of vendors, network and security posture — rather than saying the infrastructure will be robust and scalable. The software development plan should say what you build versus buy and why, and what governs releases. Management and staffing should give a structure with roles and reporting, not a headcount. Resource requirements should carry actual figures across capital and operating, and should be consistent with the staffing plan you just described. Whichever format you choose, the requirement to reference a minimum of five peer- reviewed or scholarly articles applies, so pick the presentation only if you are willing to put substance into the speaker notes, which is where the citations will have to live.