Summit: A Method and Software Application for Analyzing Healthcare Technology Investments

In this paper we describe Summit, a method and supporting software application used to help identify and analyze technology investments in healthcare. Summit is a user and use-centric approach to justifying technology investments. Its focus is on measuring the utility (defined as a function of benefits, costs, and risks) that results from technology support for specified healthcare scenarios, tasks, and technology interactions. Summit currently exists and has been used as a stand-alone application prototype and is currently being developed as a web-based, software-as-a-service (SaaS) that can be accessed and used by anyone. Though this paper will focus on modeling scenarios in the sub-domains of community Para medicine and mobile integrated healthcare, Summit can be used to analyze and justify technology investments across the healthcare spectrum.