While the world is advancing at an exponential rate, the global technical talent shortage is hindering the ability of healthcare firms to keep up with the latest healthtech trends. Hiring in-house resources with certain skills and specialties is becoming increasingly difficult and expensive.
In such challenging circumstances, opting for IT staff augmentation seems to be the perfect, most comprehensive solution, ensuring better cost-effectiveness, efficiency, and quality.
In this post, we’ll delve into the advantages of IT staff augmentation in healthcare, from improved versatility to seamless access to a large pool of highly-qualified and skilled talent. We’ll also discuss how opting for a reliable IT staff augmentation partner can improve your internal teams’ capabilities and enable them to deliver enterprising healthcare services and products.
What is IT Staff Augmentation?
IT staff augmentation is an industry-wide followed practice where companies augment their in-house team’s capabilities by hiring onshore, nearshore, or offshore professionals temporarily. It involves hiring individuals or teams based on their specific IT skillsets to either fill gaps in your existing workforce’s capabilities or to meet excessive demand for IT services.
This practice enables organizations to leverage flexible resources and extensive expertise to support their healthtech projects, initiatives, projects, and ongoing operations. Instead of hiring permanent employees, companies can hire remote healthtech experts for a defined period to drive better affordability and efficiency.
The augmented staff members work alongside your in-house IT team, sharing knowledge and expertise, collaborating on tasks, and contributing towards providing customers with a convenient, inventive healthcare experience.
Challenges Faced by Healthcare Firms While Hiring IT Talent
Finding young healthcare IT talent can pose various challenges. Some of these challenges include:
Limited pool of talent:
The healthtech field is still relatively new, and compared to other industries, it’s difficult to find IT talent with significant healthcare expertise, knowledge, and skills. Considering that many healthcare enterprises are heading towards digital transformation, the demand for such professionals often exceeds the supply, making it difficult to find suitable candidates.
Specialized skill requirements:
Healthcare is a highly specialized field where companies look for IT professionals with significant expertise and knowledge regarding healthcare operations and regulations. It is extremely difficult to find young IT talent with the right mix of technical skills, such as proficiency in programming languages, database management, and system integration, along with an understanding of healthcare processes.
Competition from other industries:
The technology sector offers various attractive career prospects to young IT professionals. Moreover, considering that there’s high demand in areas such as software development, data science, or artificial intelligence, it’s quite difficult for healthcare firms to hire and retain IT talent.
Lack of awareness and exposure:
Healthtech is not a well-known and sought-after career path, especially for young IT professionals. Considering that candidates are required to have sufficient healthcare knowledge along with technical expertise, they prefer other options. Some individuals may also not be aware of the opportunities available in this field. This lack of awareness and high skepticism keeps young IT professionals from pursuing a career in healthcare technology.
Rapidly evolving technology landscape:
Healthtech is a constantly evolving field with new technologies, regulations, systems, and trends emerging regularly. However, finding a young IT talent who remains updated with the latest healthtech advancement and has the skills to navigate innovation and provide more convenient and inventive healthtech solutions can be challenging.
Limited industry experience:
Young IT professionals like developers and software testers may lack sufficient industry expertise in healthcare. While they may have various technical skills and expertise in using various programming languages, they may need additional training and mentoring to bridge the gap between technology and healthcare.
Compliance and security concerns:
Healthcare firms deal with sensitive patient data. Hence, they must ensure compliance with privacy regulations, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Finding IT professionals who’re not only aware of the importance of data security, privacy, and compliance but also know about sensitive healthcare operations is quite challenging. Moreover, healthtech concepts are not emphasized enough in traditional technology degree programs.
To overcome these challenges, healthcare firms have no choice but to invest in targeted recruitment strategies, collaborate with educational institutions to develop specialized healthcare IT programs, provide mentorship and training opportunities to young talent, and create a supportive and attractive work environment that aligns with the interests and aspirations of young professionals. Unfortunately, not every healthcare firm has the financial capacity to carry out such operations. They need a quick, effective, and affordable fix to their healthcare IT recruitment woes.
Benefits of Opting for a Reliable IT Staff Augmentation Partner
Opting for an IT staff augmentation partner can offer several benefits to healthcare firms. Some of the key advantages include:
Access to specialized expertise:
IT staff augmentation enables healthcare firms to benefit from a large pool of highly skilled and specialized offshore and nearshore IT professionals on a temporary basis. These professionals bring specific technical knowledge and experience in healthcare IT, such as electronic health records (EHR) systems, healthcare data management, cybersecurity, telemedicine platforms, and health informatics. They can help healthcare firms overcome technical challenges and drive successful digital transformation.
Scalability and flexibility:
IT staff augmentation makes it easier for healthcare firms to meet their IT needs, which often fluctuate due to factors like organizational growth, project requirements, or regulatory changes. It provides healthcare firms with enough flexibility to scale their IT resources up or down based on demand. It also allows them to quickly ramp up their IT workforce for new projects or initiatives temporarily.
Cost-effectiveness:
It’s a lot cheaper to opt for a staff augmentation partner than it is to hire professionals through traditional recruitment methods. By hiring in-house, full-time employees, healthcare firms have to bear recruitment, onboarding, and training costs. They also have to provide market-competitive wages and benefits. On the other hand, hiring offshore or nearshore professionals is a lot cheaper. Not only do they have lower wage demands, but they also don’t require additional benefits and incentives. This reduces overhead costs and allows for more efficient allocation of resources.
Faster time-to-market:
Speed and agility are crucial in every industry, including healthcare. IT staff augmentation enables healthcare firms to improve time-to-market by accelerating their IT projects. They also help make the recruitment process more efficient and effective. The augmentation partner can also provide custom resources with the required experience and expertise, allowing projects to move forward without delays associated with traditional hiring processes.
Risk mitigation and compliance:
Healthcare IT involves dealing with sensitive patient data and ensuring compliance with regulatory standards like HIPAA. IT staff augmentation partners are typically well-versed in healthcare regulations and security protocols. They can provide resources who are familiar with compliance requirements and can help healthcare firms mitigate risks associated with data breaches, privacy violations, or regulatory non-compliance.
Conclusion
Embracing IT staff augmentation allows healthcare organizations to leverage technology effectively, enhance patient care, optimize operations, and stay ahead in the ever-evolving digital healthcare landscape. With the right IT staff augmentation partner, healthcare organizations can unlock their full potential and drive innovation to deliver better patient and provider outcomes.
