Notifications
Clear all
Topic starter
25/06/2026 10:47 pm
TL;DR: Hospital digitalisation still breaks down when identity workflows are introduced without clinical adoption, training, and governance, according to Imprivata’s interview with Michaela Hansen. The bigger issue is not software access alone but whether identity controls fit frontline work without forcing unsafe workarounds.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Imprivata: an interview with Clinical Workflow Specialist Michaela Hansen on clinical workflow, adoption, and digitalisation in hospitals
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should hospitals reduce identity friction for frontline clinicians?
A: Hospitals should design identity journeys around clinical tasks, not around internal IT convenience.
Q: Why do access projects fail more often in clinical environments?
A: Access projects fail in clinical environments when rollout planning ignores the pace, pressure, and interruption risk of frontline care.
Q: How can teams tell whether identity rollout is actually working?
A: Teams should measure whether users can complete their work at the first attempt, with minimal help desk intervention and no need for temporary access workarounds.
Practitioner guidance
- Map identity journeys to clinical tasks Trace the steps clinicians follow to start a shift, open core applications, and move between systems.
- Validate first-day role profiles before rollout Test whether each staff role has the right application access on day one, before the official cutover.
- Use champions to surface workflow breakpoints Assign peer advocates from both clinical and IT teams to identify where identity controls slow work or create confusion.
What's in the full article
Imprivata's full interview covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- The interview format and firsthand practitioner perspective from Michaela Hansen on clinical workflow adoption
- Examples of how frontline staff react to new identity-enabled hospital tools in day-to-day work
- The role of local champions and leadership support in driving acceptance of digital workflows
- The broader discussion of how clinical and IT teams can translate between their different operating languages
👉 Read Imprivata's interview on clinical workflow adoption in hospitals →
Clinical workflow identity in hospitals: what IAM teams miss?
Explore further
25/06/2026 11:28 pm
Clinical identity governance fails when access design ignores frontline tempo. The article shows that clinicians will not wait indefinitely for identity controls to catch up with patient care. That means the real governance issue is not whether access exists in the catalogue, but whether it can be used safely and naturally under operational pressure. Programmes that treat identity as a back-office function will keep generating workarounds. Practitioners should read this as a usability and governance failure, not a training footnote.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 80% of identity breaches involved compromised non-human identities such as service accounts and API keys, according to Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
- Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts, which shows how often identity governance starts from incomplete inventory data.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Who should be accountable for making clinical identity controls usable?
A: Accountability should sit jointly with IAM, application owners, and clinical leadership because usability and governance are inseparable in a hospital setting. IAM owns the access model, application owners know the workflow, and clinical leaders validate whether the process works in practice. If any one group is absent, the rollout will likely miss real-world requirements.
👉 Read our full editorial: Clinical workflow identity in hospitals is still a governance problem
