My Optimism for Healthcare IT in 2016

In yesterday’s post about physician EHR dissatisfaction in 2015 that there are many reasons to be optimistic about where healthcare is heading. I really am optimistic about healthcare IT in 2016. Here’s a look at some of the reasons I’m optimistic about 2016 improving healthcare and improving life for doctors.

Medical Knowledge Sharing – Platforms like Figure 1 are changing how medical knowledge is learned and shared. It’s impossible for any 1 person to keep up with the body of medical knowledge that’s available. That’s why crowdsourced platforms like Figure 1 are so exciting. Add in the AI developments like Watson and there’s a lot of cause for excitement about how patients will benefit from doctors getting the right information they need to provide the best care. I’m also excited by efforts to share best practices and clinical decision support findings between institutions. I’m hopeful that 2016 will mark a banner year for this type of sharing between medical professionals.

Meaningful Use Shackles are Broken – We’ll see if the government shuts down the meaningful use program or if doctors will essentially shut down the meaningful use program by not participating. Either way, I predict that 2016 will put meaningful use in our rear view mirror. The shackles of meaningful use will be broken and we’ll be able to start focusing EHR on things that matter to doctors and patients: improved care, improved productivity, and lower costs.

Data Sharing Starts Providing Value – Value based reimbursement and associated trends are pushing data sharing and I believe healthcare organizations are finally on board. No, 2016 won’t bring one central repository of all your healthcare data that any health care provider can access anytime. No, 2016 won’t bring ubiquitous sharing of all your healthcare data in exact the right place it’s needed at the right time. Those will both take more time. However, we’re going to see targeted sharing that makes patients lives better and lowers costs.

Patient Activism – The waves of sensors and high deductible plans is changing patients from passive viewers of their healthcare into active patients. Many won’t have a choice but to be involved in their healthcare since they can’t afford to not be involved. This will require some doctors some angst, but will ultimately be embraced and appreciated by most. This change in patient behavior is going to inspire a whole new breed of technology that enables patients and changes our view of healthcare.

New Care Models – A wide variety of new models have started in healthcare. Direct primary care and concierge medicine are two that have gotten a lot of attention. However, I’m not sure those will scale across all of healthcare. However, combine those with trends in telemedicine (which I believe is inevitable) and platforms like HealthTap which open up health care services in new, creative ways.

Healthcare Communication – It still shocks me how poorly health care has implemented the communication that’s available every where else in society today. I realize that privacy concerns has been used as the excuse for why healthcare is further behind, but that’s a poor excuse. I’m not trying to discount the need for applying appropriate privacy and security principles in these applications. I am suggesting that it’s possible to implement the latest communication technologies in healthcare in a HIPAA private and secure manner. There’s so much opportunity for health care to benefit from better communication that’s facilitated by technology that it’s impossible for this not to improve in 2016.

Those are a few of the things which have me optimistic for healthcare in 2016. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. What will 2016 bring us?

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

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