As care delivery becomes more digital, distributed and always-on, healthcare CIOs are being asked to deliver far more than IT efficiency. Decisions that were once operational are now inseparable from care continuity, patient trust and clinical outcomes. This shift spans providers as well as the pharmaceutical and medical device organizations behind modern care delivery.
The rapid expansion of virtual care, with the telehealth market projected to exceed $175 billion globally by 2026, is further intensifying demands and extending critical services well beyond hospital walls. At the same time, healthcare manufacturers are connecting R&D, production and supply chains to accelerate innovation.
Through its work with hundreds of CIOs across healthcare organizations globally, Tata Communications has observed a consistent pattern in how these expectations are changing. CIOs face shared challenges that are redefining both their role and the pace of decision-making.
From this work, four overarching forces have emerged. These forces can be defined as SNAP:
- Simplification imperative
- Network as a strategic asset
- AI readiness
- Precedent-free leadership
These forces provide a lens for understanding how healthcare technology leadership is being redefined and why CIOs must now focus on harnessing them to sustain care, trust and performance at scale.
S – Simplification imperative in healthcare
Healthcare IT environments have become vast, interconnected ecosystems. EHRs, diagnostic imaging platforms, telehealth systems and remote monitoring tools must operate seamlessly across multiple locations and care settings, while growing numbers of connected medical devices introduces new data flows and security considerations.
Much of this digital expansion has been layered onto legacy infrastructure that was never designed for today’s hybrid, always-on care models. Gartner forecasts that 90% of organizations will operate hybrid cloud environments by 2027, increasing complexity for healthcare providers.
Vendor sprawl has also become a problem. “For networking alone, I see companies working with 30 to 60 different vendors,” says Rajarshi Purkayastha, Vice President of Pre-Sales for the Americas at Tata Communications. “The more vendors they’re working with, the harder – and more expensive – it is to manage that complexity.”
To harness this force, CIOs must treat simplification as a clinical priority. The goal is clearer visibility, fewer points of failure and consistent performance across environments that support care delivery.
N – Network as the strategic asset
As healthcare becomes more distributed, the network is also increasingly recognized as a clinical asset rather than basic infrastructure. Clinicians expect instant, reliable access to patient information regardless of location. Patients expect digital services to “just work.” When network performance falters, the impact is immediate.
Harnessing this force means repositioning the network at the center of healthcare strategy – not as plumbing, but as the nervous system of modern care delivery. The focus for CIOs needs to shift to resilience, low latency and predictable performance from the edge to the cloud.
A – AI readiness
In addition, AI is rapidly moving from experimentation to real-world application in healthcare – from imaging analysis and diagnostic support to capacity planning and operational optimization. But healthcare AI places uniquely demanding requirements on infrastructure.
The healthcare industry generates approximately 30% of the world’s data, driven by imaging, genomics and connected devices. As AI adoption accelerates, readiness means being able to support new workloads without disrupting care.
To harness AI effectively, CIOs must build AI into the digital foundation rather than bolt it on. As Murali Krishnan, Associate Vice President and Head of Strategic Products Group for the Americas at Tata Communications, explains: “Baking AI into the technology ecosystem tends to be more successful than plugging AI into it. AI thinks, acts and responds faster than a human would, you can’t just force-fit it into operations that used to be centered around humans”.
P – Precedent-free leadership
Overlaying all of this is a leadership challenge unlike any healthcare CIOs have faced before. They must enable innovation at speed while ensuring compliance, defending against escalating cyber threats and maintaining uninterrupted operations. There is no established playbook to follow.
Harnessing this force requires a shift in leadership mindset. CIOs need to move from technology stewards to outcome-driven leaders, guided by a clear north star focused on care quality, safety and trust, working with partners to help them deliver this.
Harnessing the four forces for success
Healthcare’s digital transformation is accelerating. The CIOs who succeed will be those who actively harness the SNAP forces together – simplifying complexity, strengthening networks, preparing for AI and leading without precedent – rather than addressing each in isolation.
Tata Communications works with healthcare organizations globally across provider, pharmaceutical and medical device ecosystems to simplify complex digital environments and deliver the secure, resilient connectivity that modern care models depend on – helping CIOs sustain care delivery as expectations and the pace of change accelerate.
