Forrester’s Take On Computing Trends For Next Year

Recently, Forrester Research’s J.P. Gownder released a list of six broad tech trends he feels will dominate 2014. While they’re not healthcare-specific, I thought our readers would appreciate them, as they are relevant to the work that we do.

Mobility:  Gownder is arguing that this year coming will see a “sustained mobile mind shift.” He argues that customers and employees are beginning to expect that the data they touch will be available to them in context on any device at the exact what would’ve need. He argues that customers will actively shun businesses that lack mobile applications.

Fragmentation:  While vendors would like to see us, as consumers, stick to one vendor and operating system, Gownder argues that just the opposite will happen in 2014, with people trading off between multiple devices and thriving across operating systems. This movement, driven by the seeming infinity of new mobile devices, makes things more difficult for health IT administrators, to be certain.

Wearables:  While the wearables devices your editor has seen strike her mostly as toys, Gownder is far more enthusiastic. He argues that next year will see commercial availability of a range of once theoretical wearables — and that enterprise wearables have a particularly rich future ahead of them.

Intelligent assistants:  For me, services like Siri and Samsung’s S-Voice are entertaining, but hardly add anything to the mix when it comes to what your phone tablet or PC can do. Gownder, however, believes that intelligent assistance will rise to prominence in 2014 as they become more sophisticated, interesting and useful.

Gestural computing: Expect to see new applications and scenarios for gestural computing this year, Gownder predicts, driven by phenomena like the presence of XBox Kinect in tens of millions of homes, the emergence of Leap Motion and the emergence of a new device known as Myo from Thalmic Labs. In this case he isolates healthcare specifically as a strong use case, in which professionals manipulate and navigate medical imaging using gestures.

Stores recognize you: Here’s one I can see direct healthcare applications for; next year, Gownder predicts, will be the year in which you walk into a store and the store “recognizes you” and tailors your experience accordingly. I can see this being relevant in virtually any public-facing healthcare setting, including the ED, medical clinics and perhaps even EMT settings. Sounds very much like John’s description of a “biometrically controlled healthcare system.

So which of these trends do you think will be the most important next year? How are you adopting them, if at all, in your healthcare organization?

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

1 Comment

  • We see an increase in mobile use in the medical field. Mobile apps with EHR integration provide doctors with improved documentation efficiency while also improving the patient experience. Doctors are able to spend more time engaging with their patients versus sitting at a computer and manually entering information behind a desk away from their patients.

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