Mandaya Hospital Group

Bringing IT into Healthcare Context: Start by Seeing Through the Stakeholder’s Eyes

IT is essentially the same across industries—including healthcare. What matters most is understanding the needs and expected outcomes of stakeholders. In a hospital setting, those stakeholders could be nurses, doctors, private insurers, or other healthcare professionals. Most often, what they need is faster service delivery—but to achieve that, we first have to understand what’s standing in the way.

For me, the first step is to mentally put myself in their position. That means understanding their mindset and priorities as if I were one of them. This perspective is critical, especially because many IT professionals don’t come from a healthcare background and tend to separate themselves from the business side. They focus solely on the technology without fully considering the needs of those it’s meant to serve.

That disconnect is exactly why I chose to pursue a Master’s in Hospital Administration from the University of Indonesia. It’s helped me bridge the gap between IT and healthcare operations, so that our technology solutions are functional and truly aligned with how care is delivered.

Driving Digital Transformation in Healthcare: Vision Alignment, Prioritization, and Earning Trust

1. It’s always about the initiatives. We need to align with the hospital’s overall strategy. Getting on the same page with top management—the CEO or the shareholders. We must share the same vision and mission, even if our methods for achieving them differ. It’s also essential to understand the business priorities at any given time. At Mandaya, I’m fortunate to share a common vision with our President Director, Dr. Ben Widaja. We are working to elevate Mandaya to a new level in medical services and patient care. That drives our tagline: “A hospital like no other.”

2. Investment is always a challenge. However, as long as we are clear on our priorities and communicate the importance of those priorities to management, we can find a way forward.

3. People are always the biggest challenge. We can overcome this with the proper training and a personal approach, especially when working with doctors. Even though we are quite senior in our roles, people will respect and follow our lead if we show them that we genuinely know how to get things done. Trust is built through competence and action.

“Technology should serve people, not vice versa. When IT understands clinical needs, innovation becomes truly meaningful.”

Leveraging Digital Tools in Healthcare: Speed, Safety, and Smarter Service Delivery

Every technology has its purpose. For EHR or EMR, it has been well proven that these systems help clinicians perform their tasks faster and more safely, creating more potential to improve patient safety and overall clinical outcomes. With centralized data storage, we also gain better opportunities for collaboration and can begin conducting meaningful data analytics, even using AI to support advanced analysis and targeted decision-making.

For telemedicine, since the COVID pandemic, technology has supported remote services effectively. While patients have started returning to in-person visits, telemedicine remains strong, offering a practical solution for patients who are immobile or too busy to visit a facility. We even support medication delivery through services like Grab or Gojek, adding unique convenience to the patient experience.

Finally, if you can manage time efficiently, deliver clinical care with precision, and handle your data well, then improved service quality will follow—and so will operational efficiency.

Balancing Cybersecurity and Innovation: Build a Safe Foundation Without Slowing Progress

It has to be balanced. You need to start with a strong infrastructure as the basic foundation. Creating a secure environment is key, including clearly separating development and production environments to reduce risk.

We must also implement solid IT governance, maintain reliable backups, and ensure high availability in critical areas. Combining cloud and on-premise environments and agile development methods is essential for delivering solutions quickly and efficiently.

At the same time, we have to be smart about choosing which solutions to build in-house and which to adopt from third parties. This helps us avoid delays, stay competitive, and capture opportunities without compromising security.

The Future of Healthcare Technology: AI Will Reshape Roles, Not Replace Them

AI will definitely be the main one. It has the potential to change or even shift the entire model of healthcare delivery, and it can help patients better understand their own conditions. Sometimes, patients might become more critical and start questioning doctors based on AI-generated insights. While those insights may not always be entirely accurate, they can sometimes provide answers that a human might overlook.

In my opinion, doctors will act more as subject matter experts in the future, verifying AI results and adding the human touch that technology simply can’t replace. That’s where the true balance lies: using AI to enhance care, not to replace the people who provide it.