Adapt to Uncertainty With a Technology-First Action Plan for Healthcare
Cost cutting in times of crisis works; doubling down on innovation works even better.
The healthcare sector is enduring a barrage of macro-level challenges – the worsening impacts of budgetary pressures, policy and regulatory upheaval, and increasingly sophisticated cybersecurity threats are rippling through hospital systems. From their strategic position at the head of their organizations’ IT teams, healthcare CIOs are often the first to detect the impact of these shocks and are ideally placed to lead the response. Our step-by-step blueprint empowers technology leaders in the healthcare sector to build a Technology-First Action Plan that transforms today’s volatility into tomorrow’s strategic value.
AI-powered claims automation, FinOps, cloud optimization, Gen AI copilots, and privacy-preserving analytics are just some of the tools available to healthcare organizations looking for technological solutions to these unpredictable headwinds. Healthcare CIOs must convince organizational leadership to invest in these technologies not only as a hedge against uncertainty, but as an opportunity to foster the IT resilience and agility that will enable them to thrive while others tread water.
1. Cut costs to free up resources for innovation.
Innovation drives new ways of generating organizational value but often sees its budget slashed amid budget constraints. IT leaders must cut unnecessary costs and redirect that spending to the people, resources, and budgetary capacity their innovation efforts will need to overcome today’s turmoil.
2. Meet the moment. Take the lead.
As much as today’s uncertainty is a strain on IT’s resources, it can also be an opportunity. By demonstrating that their technological know-how can be used not only to solve problems but also to enable better decision-making, CIOs can prove their ability to lead not just IT, but the organization as a whole.
3. Build an adaptive IT team.
With technology advancing at an exponential rate, you will never permanently close the skills gap. Focus instead on building sustainable learning and development practices to enable your staff to retain knowledge and develop in-demand skills as they are needed.
Use this step-by-step blueprint to realign healthcare IT into a posture of resilience
Our research offers practical guidance and templates to make a clear assessment of IT’s strengths and vulnerabilities, and where they can be leveraged. Use our Technology-First Action Plan framework to empower IT to lead the organization through the challenges facing the healthcare sector.
- Assess uncertainties and opportunities by leveraging this moment to explore where the organization is most vulnerable and where it is most poised to further lean into technology risks.
- Review IT Spend & Staffing tools and services to find costs that can be either cut or channelled toward innovation opportunities.
- Build your Technology-First Action Plan by identifying and prioritizing initiatives that will drive the organization forward and consolidate those initiatives into a 12-month plan.
- Prepare to execute by defining the organizational value of your plan and building an adjustable communications strategy to bring stakeholders on board.
Adapt to Uncertainty With a Technology-First Action Plan for Healthcare
Cost cutting in times of crisis works; doubling down on innovation works even better.
Analyst perspective
Cost cutting keeps healthcare afloat; tech-powered innovation builds resilience.
Healthcare CIOs uniquely sit at the center of every clinical workflow, patient data stream, and operational control point. This makes them the first to see how tariffs, Medicaid cuts, regulatory shifts, and talent shortages ripple through hospital systems. These shocks often surface as delayed reimbursements, higher drug costs, and compliance bottlenecks, making the technology function the early warning system and the fastest lever for response.
Fortunately, healthcare’s tech-enabled toolkit can now neutralize these pressures. AI-powered claims automation accelerates revenue, cutting denial rates and capturing telehealth billing opportunities. FinOps and cloud optimization curb spending spikes while maintaining clinical system availability. Gen AI copilots and RPA bots help close skill gaps amid clinical workforce shortages. Privacy-preserving analytics support HIPAA compliance while enabling care improvements and data-driven insights.
Acting now allows CIOs to position technology investment as an “uncertainty hedge,” enabling resilience and preserving cash flow before boards move to across-the-board cuts. Proactive digital leadership today will prevent reactive austerity tomorrow – and no other executive is better placed than the CIO to lead hospitals through these uncertain times.
Build a technology-first action plan that can turn today’s volatility into tomorrow’s value.
Sharon Auma-Ebanyat
Research Director, Healthcare Industry
Info-Tech Research Group
Please note: This research was developed with the assistance of generative AI. For information about how, please see in the Appendix.
Executive summary
Your challenge
In 2025, organizations faced a series of unexpected macro-vulnerabilities that drastically impacted how they functioned
Cost & Funding Pressure
- US employer-sponsored health plans are projected to face an 8% medical cost increase in 2025, the highest in 13 years, driven by rising prescription drug prices and overall inflation (PWC, 2025).
- In January 2025, the median hospital operating margin reached 4.4%. This is an increase from 2024 but is still too narrow to support major capital investments (Fierce Healthcare, 2025).
- In 2025, Congress passed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” cutting Medicaid by over $1.5 trillion over 10 years by capping federal funding and adding strict work requirements, which is expected to reduce Medicaid enrollment by 15 to 20 million, increasing uncompensated care and charity care burdens for hospitals (AHA, 2025; CBS News, 2025).
Policy and Regulatory Shifts
- In the US, EHR vendors were required to publish FHIR-based APIs by December 31, 2024, and healthcare providers and health insurance plans must begin using them by January 1, 2026, under ONC’s HTI-1 rule. (ONC, 2024).
- In the EU, the AI Act takes effect on February 2, 2025, banning “unacceptable-risk” clinical AI and enforcing safety checks for high-risk systems (EUR-Lex, 2024).
- The European Health Data Space Regulation begins on March 26, 2025, requiring phased cross-border health data sharing across EU member states (EUR-Lex, 2024).
Cyber & Data Resilience
- 67% of healthcare organizations worldwide were hit by ransomware in 2024 – up from 60% the year before (Sophos, 2024).
- North American providers reported 181 confirmed attacks that compromised 25.6 million patient records with average demands of US $5.7 million (The HIPAA Journal, 2025).
- Average breach-recovery costs in the sector climbed to US$9.77 million in 2024, the highest of any industry (IBM, 2024).
Executive summary
Common obstacles
For CIOs and IT leaders, these vulnerabilities present challenges to achieving their technology mandates
Deferring Digital Transformation
- 75% of health-system executives call digital and AI transformation a top priority, yet they admit they lack the planning or resources to deliver it (McKinsey & Company, 2024).
- Even among organizations that boosted IT budgets, 56% still need more resources and 53% struggle with operational rollout for new tech projects (Guidehouse, 2023).
Accessing Critical IT Skills & Knowledge
- Hospital RN turnover remained at 18.3% across the US in 2024, keeping agency-nurse premiums high and stalling IT go-lives that depend on clinical champions (NSI Nursing Solutions, 2025).
- Canada recorded 78,600 unfilled health-occupation vacancies in Q3 2024, intensifying wage inflation and cross-border recruiting competition (Statistics Canada, 2024).
Vendor & Compliance Overload
- 62% of organizations experienced a third-party cyber-related supply chain disruption in 2024, up 13% year-over-year, stretching already thin vendor-risk teams (Hyperproof, 2025).
- Providers report that vendor integration and compliance tasks now consume 20% to 30% of CIO time, slowing innovation despite rising IT spend (Guidehouse, 2023).
Executive summary
Resolution
Explore the entire suite of research that supports these pillars by visiting our research center IT’s Moment: A Technology-First Solution for Uncertain Times.
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Lead the Organization, Not Just IT
Neutralize Uncertainty Now -
Fund Innovation by Cutting Costs
Run IT by the Numbers -
Pursue IT Excellence
Don’t Take Your Foot off the Gas -
Build an Adaptive IT Workforce
Lead at the Pace of Change -
Slash Your AI Transformation Timeline
Deliver Impact Now -
Execute and Prepare to Pivot
Adapt on the Fly
Info-Tech’s Approach
- Phase 1 – Assess Uncertainties and Opportunities
- Phase 2 – Review Budget, Staffing, and Contracts
- Phase 3 – Build Your Technology-First Action Plan
- Phase 4 – Get Ready to Execute!
1: Lead the Organization, Not Just IT
Neutralize Uncertainty Now
- Defuse Uncertainty Drivers: Understand organizational impact.
- Lean Into the Curve: Apply Exponential IT.
- Pick Your First Bets: Deliver use cases now.
- Claim Your New Mandate: Technology-first or go out of business.
- Get the Word Out: Tell the entire organization now.
Start by assessing the impact of global uncertainty on your organization. Develop and communicate mitigation options based on likelihood and immediate impact. Counter the global uncertainty with a technology-first action plan.
2: Fund Innovation by Cutting Costs
Run IT by the Numbers
- Don’t Bet the Farm: Set the innovation budget.
- Find Real Dollars Quickly: Cut costs now.
- Demonstrate Technology Impact: Benchmark spend and shift.
- Shorten the Cycles: Build a flexible budget (finally).
- Sharpen the Pencil: Renegotiate vendor contracts.
Build a significant cost reduction plan to free up budget, people, and resources. Overshoot any cost-cutting mandates and use the overage to fund innovation.
20%
Only 20% of CFOs are happy with the impact tech investments make on their business (Remini Street, 2024).
3: Pursue IT Excellence
Don’t Take Your Foot off the Gas
- Get the Baseline: Understand your maturity.
- Focus on What Really Matters: Improve your critical capabilities.
- You Can’t Do IT Alone: Guide your team.
- Enable Everyone: Provide tools and training.
- Aim High Selectively: Leapfrog for impact.
Don’t let uncertainty derail your path to systematically pursue IT excellence. Focus on the capabilities proven to have the highest impact and leverage your team to execute.
85%
85% of core processes are ineffective on average across all IT organizations (Info-Tech IT Management & Governance Diagnostic, 2024).
4: Build an Adaptive IT Workforce
Lead at the Pace of Change
- Knowledge Is Power: Stop the drain.
- Drive Adaptability: Be it and teach it.
- Lead the Pack: Autonomize aggressively.
- Fill Your Gaps: Build critical skills.
- Win the Race for Talent: Money isn’t everything.
Global uncertainty is putting pressure on the workforce. As traditional skill procurement sources change, you need to prioritize retaining knowledge and developing in-demand skills from within.
IT positions that are going unfilled are costing organizations in the United States an average of $187 billion in lost revenue each year (CompTIA, 2024).
5: Slash Your AI Transformation Timeline
Deliver Impact Now
- Just Do It: Deliver AI now.
- Stop Saying No: Democratize AI.
- Spend, Spend, Spend: Overfund innovation.
- Have ONE Strategy: AI Strategy = IT Strategy = Enterprise Strategy
- If in Doubt, Buy Over Build: Select the right vendors.
Agentic AI is here. Pivot from long-term transformation roadmaps to certain ROI delivery today, mostly leveraging vendor capabilities. Use freed-up funds to drive organizational outcomes.
CEOs believe that the researching and implementing AI is the top IT priority (Foundry, 2025).
6: Execute and Prepare to Pivot
Adapt on the Fly
- Aim for Impact: Say yes to promising pilots.
- Measure What’s Real and Fund What Works: Fund based on outcomes.
- Let Things Go. Kill failing projects quickly.
- Shatter the Org Chart: Match talent to impact.
- It’s Not Bragging If It’s True: Share wins and failures.
Constant change means no time to slow down. Create mechanisms to successfully implement your action plan. Monitor the progress of your initiatives and adapt rapidly and in real time.
Organizations that accelerated their digital transformation during the pandemic significantly outperformed their peers
The growth advantage that companies that are technology leaders had over laggards went from 2x to 5x post pandemic.1
Organizations that shifted their IT budgets from being operations-centric to innovation-centric – labeled “leapfroggers” – managed to significantly reduce their digital transformation timeline and outperform laggards by four times.1
Companies that are “future-ready,” having gone through digital business transformation and developed the capabilities that enable them to innovate and to engage and satisfy customers while reducing costs, have significantly higher financial performance, with average revenue growth 17.3 percentage points and net margins 14.0 percentage points above industry average.2
1. Accenture, 2021
2. MIT CISR, 2022
Cost cutting in times of crisis works.
Doubling down on innovation works even better.
Innovation outpaces austerity
While your peers and competitors look for ways to follow cost-cutting mandates, look for ways to demonstrate why investment in innovation will take the organization further faster.
Starve waste, feed a revolution
Cut costs relentlessly now to avoid having to give up innovation budget, so you can transform the organization when it is needed most. It is through innovation that the organization will be exposed to new ways of generating organizational value.
Technology powers smart decision-making
This is an opportunity to demonstrate to the organization that IT is not a follower, but a leader. Use your greatest asset – technology – and demonstrate to the organization how it can be used to enable better decision making.
Always be learning
The exponential rate of technology development and adoption means organizations will never close the skill gap again, especially for IT. Focus on establishing sustainable learning and development practices that allow staff to upskill and apply those skills quickly.
Change is constant; struggle is optional
Change is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to be hard. Establish adaptive practices in your change plan to ensure that it remains on track and continuously moving in the right direction.
Info-Tech’s methodology for building a Technology-First Action Plan for healthcare
1. Assess Uncertainties & Opportunities |
2. Review Budget, Staffing & Contracts |
3. Build Your Technology-First Action Plan |
4. Get Ready to Execute |
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Key Activities |
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Phase Outcomes |
Understand the risks that vulnerabilities are creating for your organization and the technology-enabled opportunities that need to be seized. | Review your IT budget to determine where there are opportunities to cut costs relentlessly. Funnel these cost savings toward innovative opportunities. | Prioritize initiatives that will drive the organization forward in times of uncertainty. Establish a 12-month roadmap showing when each initiative can be achieved. | Succeed at the action plan with a clear change and communication approach to enable adaptability in the moment when new vulnerabilities inevitably emerge. |
Key deliverable:
Technology-First Action Plan
Build a Technology-First Action Plan that demonstrates how IT can lead the organization in responding to ongoing uncertainties.
Uncertainties & Opportunities Assessment
Identify how macro-uncertainties are generating new risks for your organization and opportunities to leverage technology more effectively.
IT Spend & Staffing Benchmarking
Assess the current IT spend across systems, contracts, projects, and the workforce to identify cost optimization opportunities.
Technology-First Action Plan Roadmap
Identify key initiatives that IT will pursue and deliver against over the next 12 months to reduce the impacts of uncertainties.
Communication & Execution
Define and prepare to communicate how the Technology-First Action Plan will deliver organizational value.
Blueprint benefits
IT Benefits
- Maintain full control over the timing and scope of any technology-related cost reductions.
- Reallocate freed-up budget to AI and other digital transformation initiatives that fuel continuous innovation.
- Gain early visibility into emerging risks that could impact both the enterprise and the IT function.
- Systematically enhance critical IT capabilities and translate them into measurable performance gains.
- Maximize existing technical talent through targeted upskilling and structured knowledge transfer.
Organizational Benefits
- Mitigate macro-level uncertainties through a proactive, risk-aligned action plan.
- Outperform competitors by remaining resilient and focused on opportunities during periods of volatility.
- Shift leadership effort from diagnosing uncertainty to executing decisive, innovative responses.
- Strengthen cross-functional collaboration to simultaneously reduce risk and capture new value.
Measure the value of this blueprint
The objective of this blueprint is to improve not just IT’s value, but the organization’s value.
ORGANIZATIONAL VALUE
Revenue Acceleration
- Year-over-year (YoY) revenue growth
- Telehealth visit volume growth YoY
- AI-assisted claim denial reduction rate
- Remote monitoring reimbursement revenue growth
Cost Optimization
- Operating expense ratio (OpEx as % of revenue)
- Procurement savings vs. baseline
- Cloud FinOps savings as % of IT spend
- Admin labor cost reduction via RPA
Operational Efficiency
- Return on assets (ROA)
- Asset-turnover ratio (revenue / total assets)
- Fixed-asset utilization (uptime vs. downtime)
Customer Satisfaction
- Patient experience survey scores
- Patient scheduling self-service usage rate
- Patient adherence to personalized care plans
- Revenue Acceleration: Launching new or enhanced offerings that open fresh revenue streams faster than the core business can mature.
- Cost Optimization: Optimizing operating expenses while maintaining required service and flexibility.
- Operational Efficiency: Squeezing more output or cash from every asset through higher utilization and faster turnover.
- Customer Satisfaction: Reliably exceeding customer expectations to earn loyalty and advocacy.
Research Note: Beyond Automation, Beyond Borders: Cultivating Your Talent in a New Global Reality
Fred Chagnon
Principal Research Director
Info-Tech Research Group
While the discourse around artificial intelligence, particularly generative AI, often emphasizes workforce displacement, a strategy fixated on replacing human workers with AI is shortsighted. True value creation in the AI era demands a strategic investment in people – employees and partners – to augment, manage, and innovate with these technologies.
This imperative is critically amplified by emerging de-globalization trends that are reshaping global talent pipelines and increasing the need for organizational self-sufficiency. Sustainable success, innovation, and resilience will therefore hinge on an organization’s commitment to cultivating in-house talent, focusing on skills for AI, cybersecurity, and adaptive leadership to effectively navigate a future defined by human–AI cocreation.
“The evidence suggests that, rather than seeking to replace people with AI, organizations that prioritize employee development alongside their AI investments will be better positioned to innovate, navigate ethical complexities, build customer trust, and ultimately unlock the full, transformative potential of AI and other exponential technologies.
In an era where both technological disruption and geopolitical fragmentation demand greater organizational resilience, focusing on developing our people internally becomes the linchpin of any successful AI strategy and, indeed, overall business strategy.”
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