“Having guaranteed financial backing for a digital transformation project is only half the battle.

That’s the opinion of Lisa Emery, CIO at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, who finds herself in the position of having ring-fenced funding to deliver digital transformation, but who also recognises that strategic success is dependent on an accompanying cultural shift across her organisation. While Emery has the money to invest in technology, she also recognises there are still barriers to overcome when it comes to making digitally-enabled change stick. “They’re mostly the cultural challenges,” says Emery. “That cultural barrier is about working out how much change the organisation can absorb. And how much you can actually ensure gets delivered on the ground with all of the other competing priorities you’ve got as a healthcare organisation.” Emery’s focus on the cultural challenges to digitisation is a common concern amongst healthcare tech executives. Research from consultant McKinsey suggests the three barriers to digital transformation that are most-commonly mentioned by healthcare leaders are culture and mind set, organisational structure, and governance.”

The article: Digital transformation: Culture, not cash, is your biggest challenge