Top trends driving Healthcare IT in 2013

Going by what some of the stalwarts of the industry feel, healthcare like the education industry is more than a decade behind where it should be in terms of adoption of technology. To say that it has had a tremendous impact on the manner in which the industry goes about offering its services would be an understatement. There is huge amount of scope available for improvement in this field. However, the irony lies in the fact that for real development to actually start taking shape the current landscape needs to undergo a complete change. The Healthcare industry now has too many players, of smaller size, trying to grab a market which seems limited in terms of innovations. Hence the expectations from these players is to deliver high levels of services for less, which kind of in turn is bound to put a lot of financial burden on them . As these vendors keep jostling amongst themselves for a higher share of hospital market which is kind of limited, the later on the contrary want less number of vendors to deal with. This is simply because they want to be more efficient in their operations and not run into a state where the burden of handling multiple vendors takes a toll on their core job. Thus the industry as it grows, which it must, will see a lot of changes happening in the near future culminating in the presence of fewer and efficient vendors offering a better ROI than what they do now. A lot of mergers and acquisitions are not far away as we proceed into the future.

What Health IT systems do is that they equip doctors, hospitals, and other providers to provide better coordinated care. They also ensure reduction of errors and readmissions all of which result in costing more money and leaving patients less healthy .The year 2012 proved to be a windfall year for Healthcare IT with a record $1.2 billion pumped into the sector through venture funding. While the major chuck of the deals were in health information management, significant investments seem to have been made in companies which focused on consumers e.g. Mobile health, Telehealth, Personal Health etc.

The first quarter of 2013 has also seen record investment in this field. The trigger to all this was with the Obama government encouraging the adoption of Health IT by passing the Recovery Act in 2009. In the year 2011, the Medicare and Medicaid EHR incentive programs made it possible for Doctors, hospitals, and other eligible providers to incentives for adopting and meaningfully use certified electronic health records. This move, as part of the Recovery Act, kind of incentivized early adoption of EHRs which is critical for broader healthcare Quality and efficiency improvement. It results in better care coordination, reduction of duplicate tests and procedures and finally rewarding hospitals for keeping patients healthier. The results till date prove to be highly encouraging with more than half of eligible professionals and 80 percent of eligible hospitals having meaningfully adopted EHRs and received the incentive payout. This trend is expected to up and lead to complete adoption by 2015 post which the government has plans of penalizing the ones who fail to comply with the mandate.

There is however another concern which is quite grave that is showing along with the wider adoption of EHR and it involves protection of patient data contained in its electronic health record system. By rule, to become eligible for the incentive payout, only those EHRs which are certified need to be used meaningfully. But one also needs to take into account the fact that finally the usage of the system has a human element involved and that is where adequate training needs to be given to the staff as well as monitor their access. There have been a few instances were law suits have been filed by patients where their data has been found to be compromised. This becomes a matter of grave concern and requires all concerned stakeholders to take all the requisite steps to ensure that such discrepancies are removed completely. According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 40 percent of large data breaches have involved laptop or storage devices that have been lost or stolen. Healthcare software development teams can help you build clinical and EHR/EMR software projects within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide clinical software development services. To know more about the expertise of our healthcare software developers, please visit Mindfire Solutions.

Adoption of Health IT

Going by the projections being made by various surveys in this field, the global market for healthcare IT will expand at a compound annual growth rate of 7.0 percent by 2017. The market which was at a net value of $40 billion in 2012 is expected to expand to 56.7 billion by 2017. This is going to be triggered by the need for effective administrative solutions and an increasing demand for clinical data technology. Empirical data seems to suggest that physicians, hospitals, and other providers develop the ability to better reduce errors and better coordinate care with the help of Healthcare systems. It also reduces the overall cost of operations and makes patients more healthy and satisfied. There are some major drivers of the growth in the adoption of Healthcare IT - starting from a growing demand for interoperable systems to the rise in aging population.

There are also financial incentives from the U.S. government providing for adoption of technology in Healthcare. The systems also seem to provide a high rate of return on investment to its users. From the time the Obama administration has started encouraging providers to adopt electronic health records; usage seems to have increased dramatically. This has been proved by the fact that EHR usage by physicians, which stood at about 17 percent in the year 2008 has risen to 50 percent by 2012 which has enabled them to receive the meaningful use incentive payment.  The adoption of HER by hospitals which stood at a dismal rate of just 9 percent in 2008 is currently more than 80 percent. Health IT has helped them provide better coordinate care, which has in turn improved their patients’ health and helped them save money at the same time.

As much as the momentum for Health IT is gaining ground there are also a lot of detractors. They do not necessarily agree that these advances will further doctors' knowledge about patients and help them care for people in a better, more efficient way. ON the contrary they feel that it will drain their time and financial resources. As examples they quote that EHRs actually take more time entering patient information than it takes to see patients. They also feel that the compulsion to adopt ICD-10 by October 1, 2014 is also not going to be of much help as it greatly increases the specificity of diagnostic codes physicians must use when billing payers, which is a way is going to create a major  headache for some to learn the new codes.  Various Researchers have also indicated that  high initial costs to implement these healthcare IT applications systems is acting as a deterrent to the adoption . Further to this the maintenance expenses are also quite high which ultimately ends up slowing the pace of further growth. Also, it has been noticed that inspite of most physicians expressing their  interest in the prospect of using mobile health tools for clinical purposes, the mHealth market within the provider setting remains untapped. Research shows nearly 60 percent of physicians as non-users of mobile health tools.  

In many surveys done by leading companies to gauge the acceptance of healthcare IT amongst Physicians have elicited information which indicate that quite a reasonable percentage, although they are going ahead with the process of adoption, think that use of health IT tools ultimately will cost more and not less. They also felt that the promise of reduced costs due to increased use is probably inflated.  There seems ot be a belief amongst some of the respondents that hospital-physician relationships will become less stable as hospitals continue to comply with Meaningful Use.

Inspite of a lack of complete support for the process the government seems quite convinced about the supposed benefits of adopting healthcare IT and is leaving no stone unturned to hasten its implementation. Infact, there seems to be a belief that the adoptions is likely to be accelerated  likely if the local insurers, employers and consumers ensure that they tie their provider to those using HIT effectively in clinical care coordination and administrative paperwork reduction. Healthcare software development teams can help you build clinical and EHR/EMR software projects within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide clinical software development services. To know more about the expertise of our healthcare software developers, please visit Mindfire Solutions.