Not knowing the clear direction that the healthcare reform initiatives will take over the next several years, healthcare organizations remain under intense pressure to reduce costs and repair inefficiencies. Most organizations understand that to successfully execute, they have to manage cost and key performance measurements across business lines. Yet, few are able to attain this. Healthcare provider organizations find themselves in the middle of market pressures from payers, the government and competing for market share and doctors.

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Healthcare reform in dozens of countries, including France, the United Kingdom, Australia, Chile, Canada, Taiwan, China and the United States, is generating dramatically new approaches to care delivery. Although the details and the level of maturity of the efforts differ across countries, the overall trends are universal: they reflect the need to contain costs while improving access and care quality, to overcome a shortage of providers, and to take care of a growing sicker and ageing population.

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The number one challenge facing healthcare providers and public health and social services agencies is delivering higher quality care to more patients and citizens at a lower cost. A major obstacle is that the diverse players in the health ecosystem traditionally run their own applications in silos, with no interconnection among these applications. The result: no integrated view of how patient care and citizen health information is delivered across the health ecosystem.

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The healthcare ecosystem is changing. The confluence of several critical factors is necessitating a comprehensive re-evaluation of healthcare systems and the delivery of care. Established healthcare systems in developed countries will need to adjust to address the predicted chronic disease epidemics and the demands of an aging population. In developing systems, healthcare modernization is a priority as we witness a rising prevalence of 'Western' diseases. The explosion of data and associated implications for data management will also need to be tackled.

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Improving the quality and reducing the cost of patient care depends on digitizing healthcare workflows and moving to electronic patient records. These records are a type of sensitive information, also referred to as electronic Protected Health Information (ePHI). Sensitive information in electronic form presents new vulnerabilities compared to paper-based equivalents.

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