• Healthcare
• Apr 23

Six months into my role at Citrix, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about where I came from. Not in a nostalgic way, but in a very real, almost day-to-day sense. I spent years as a CIO walking the hospital floor, sitting in rooms where decisions weren’t theoretical. They were decisions that had immediate impact on clinicians, patients, and the people trying to hold everything together behind the scenes. What I didn’t fully expect is how much this role would bring me back into that same energy. Being on-site again, across different health systems, listening more than talking… it’s been grounding. And honestly, it’s been eye-opening in a different way.

What I’m hearing is consistent. Almost to the point where you can finish the sentence of a CIO before they say it.

Health systems are under pressure in ways that feel heavier than even a few years ago. Cost comes up in every conversation, but not in a simple “we need to cut” way. Leaders are trying to make sense of what they already have – what’s redundant, underutilized, or still providing value. There’s a real desire to be smarter about the existing footprint, not just layer on something new. There’s also pressure to do more with less even when the AI train continues to barrel into the doors of hospitals at a faster rate than any other technology I’ve seen.

Security is an assumed topic – every conversation eventually lands there. Not just perimeter security, but what’s happening inside the environment – lateral movement, shadow IT, medical devices that were never really designed to be secured in the first place. There’s an understanding now that it’s not a matter of if something happens, but when, and how prepared you are when it does.

Resiliency comes up right alongside that. And not just uptime in the traditional sense. I’m hearing more about operational continuity and what happens to care delivery when systems are unavailable, even for a short period of time. The tolerance for disruption is basically gone.

Then there’s M&A. It’s moving fast – sometimes faster than the organizations themselves would prefer. Integration strategies are being built while planes are still in the air. IT teams are expected to connect environments quickly, securely, and without adding cost (which is easier said than done).

Layer in governance challenges and increasing regulatory expectations, and you start to see the weight of it all. But the conversations always come back to people. Clinician burnout is still very real. And hovering over all of this is the “Silver Tsunami.” Experienced staff – people who know how these environments actually work – are retiring, and there’s real concern about the knowledge that gets lost when they leave.

What’s interesting is that despite all of this, I don’t hear people asking for more vendors. In fact, it’s usually the opposite. What they’re asking for, in a much more direct way than I remember, is partnership. Not on a slide, not in a contract – in how the work actually gets done.

Coming into this role, I had my own perspective on what that meant from the outside. Six months in, I’ve had the chance to see how teams at Citrix actually show up. And I’ll say this: it’s less about having the perfect answer and more about being willing to sit in the problem with the customer and work through it.

For example, the discussion isn’t just about protecting the edge anymore. It’s about how you reduce risk inside the environment and how you segment that environment in a way that actually reflects how healthcare operates. I’ve watched teams map out approaches that address both macro and micro segmentation, tying together infrastructure and application layers in a way that helps limit lateral movement and better protect things like medical devices and research environments. It’s not theoretical. It’s grounded in what customers are actually dealing with and opening doors to what’s possible – all while reducing the need for sneakernet.

I’ve also been part of situations where things had already gone wrong, such organizations recovering from cyber events and trying to get systems back online while managing the clinical impact in real time. In one case, we helped bring an environment back in about two days. That matters. But what stayed with me more was how much faster that recovery could have been if we had been involved earlier. That’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot—how different the outcome can be when you’re part of the conversation before the crisis. What I’ve learned is that Citrix is a great partner when the team is in the room as decisions are getting made. There’s a lot to consider when it comes to shifting disaster recovery to business resiliency, and modern IT strategy is everything.

It’s no surprise that cost continues to be a thread throughout all the conversations I’m having. But again, it’s not just about reduction. It’s about clarity and allocation. I’ve seen how tools like Citrix uberAgent can help organizations get a better understanding of how applications and user personas are actually being used ahead of major changes or decisions. That data-driven visibility can lead to more thoughtful conversations and decisions around application rationalization, which is a massive spend category in IT budgets. Overall, financial flexibility is going to be a key component of how IT budgets adapt in the years to come. Cloud migration caused a lot of disruption in the name of flexibility in the past.

As we go forward, financial agility will need to also provide financial stability, and how that happens across your workforce and the people engaging with your technology everyday will become more closely aligned. Citrix recognizes the need to enhance user and financial agility without adding unnecessary complexity and will soon provide a new way to address ongoing challenges. Register here to learn more.

Some of the most practical ways that Citrix adds value that I’ve seen are the smaller ones. The things that don’t always make headlines but make a real difference day-to-day. Using session recording and monitoring capabilities to troubleshoot issues in real time, reducing the back-and-forth between support teams and clinicians. It’s simple, but when teams are stretched thin, those gains matter.

If I step back and think about what’s changed for me personally over these last six months, it’s probably that my definition of partnership has gotten more specific. It’s less about what we say and more about when and how we show up. Are we there early enough to help shape the path, or are we being brought in after decisions have already been made? Are we simplifying things, or adding another layer of complexity?

No CIO should be navigating the current healthcare IT landscape without bringing along a few trusted advisors. That said, I don’t think any of us have this completely figured out. The environment is too dynamic for that. But I do believe there’s an opportunity for me to do things differently than what’s been done before for our healthcare customers. And that is to be more connected to what customers are actually experiencing and to respond in a way that reflects that.

Walking the floors again, even in a different role, has reminded me of something I probably already knew but needed to see again. Healthcare doesn’t need more noise. It needs people who understand what’s at stake and are willing to do the work alongside the teams carrying that responsibility every day.

Six months in, I’m still learning. But I’m encouraged by what I’ve seen so far—and even more by what I think is possible if we keep leaning in the right way.

Cletis Earle

Cletis Earle is Citrix's Healthcare Field Chief Technology Officer.