Landscape Marked by Growing Healthcare Consumerism, Continued Focus on Interoperability, a Changing Role for IT and the Slow Maturing of Healthcare Analytics
CHICAGO,IL (PRWEB) DECEMBER 21, 2015
Damo Consulting, a leading consultancy for healthcare enterprises and technology firms, today announced key trends that will shape the changing healthcare IT landscape in 2016. Key to these trends is the growth of healthcare consumerism, a continued focus on interoperability between electronic health record systems and other systems, a shift in healthcare IT decision-making, and slower-than-expected penetration of big data analytics.
“Digital technology investments will accelerate in the healthcare sector in 2016, driven by on-demand health as consumers look for healthcare to be delivered to them any time and on the go,” said Paddy Padmanabhan, CEO of Damo Consulting. “Increasing costs of health care on the ACA exchanges and the shift in financial responsibility towards consumers will drive this in a big way.”
Below are key Damo Consulting predictions:
Growth of healthcare consumerism. Enabled by increased investment in digital technology providing better communication and more real-time interaction, healthcare consumerism will gain ground in 2016. Consumers will increasingly become more involved in their own healthcare decisions and expect greater customer service with healthcare delivered to them, making life easier and giving them greater control. Additionally, greater price transparency regarding healthcare costs and increasing financial burden on consumers are causing them to more closely scrutinize and become more involved in their own healthcare decisions.
Interoperability will continue to be a top issue in 2016. While over $28 Billion has been spent so far on implementing health information technology, particularly Electronic Health Record Systems (EHR), these systems are not interoperable, meaning that information does not flow seamlessly between them. In response to this lack of interoperability, many health systems and networks are developing workarounds using available standards to exchange clinical information within and among themselves to improve the patient experience and reduce costs. According to an industry report from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, 63 percent of hospitals and 69 percent of health systems expect interoperability to be one of the top three data-related challenges over the next three years in performing analytics.
A shift in organizational command. As digital transformation takes hold and enterprises essentially turn into software companies, a new type of non-CIO executive is emerging who will lead the deployment of agile, consumer-facing, cloud-based, scalable and dynamic IT applications. We will increasingly see new titles emerge, such as chief analytics officers (CAOs) who have a direct relationship with executive leadership in healthcare enterprises. As data security breaches continue in the new year, IT security will continue to be a CEO-level issue in healthcare organizations, and this will cause increased tension between business executives and traditional IT executives for control.
Big data analytics will struggle to prove its value. While it’s true that big data is here and will get bigger as more connected devices come online and new data sources such as wearables and social media continue to grow, there are challenges that are encumbering adoption rates. The promise of big data analytics is built upon an assumption that all these data sources are readily accessible, complete and accurate, and can be easily integrated into standardized data sets to run on sophisticated predictive modeling algorithms. While many organizations are committing to some form of a population health management program, many are in the early stages of experimentation. The persistence of data silos and lack of interoperability, as well as a shortage of data scientists also will hold back adoption rates in the new year.
About Damo Consulting
Damo Consulting Inc is a Chicago-based management consulting firm focused on global sourcing and growth strategy advisory for healthcare enterprises and technology firms. Representing some of the world’s largest healthcare and IT providers, the company has a proven track record helping clients reduce costs, improve market performance and leverage innovative approaches to meet their business objectives.
For more information contact:
Linda Pendergast-Savage
Pendergast Consulting
lpendergastsavage(at)comcast.net
508-224-7905
Damo Consulting Inc
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