And, of course, he'd like to see wider adoption of open-source technology. "Healthcare is behind the curve on IT in general, and way behind the curve on open source," says Billings. "Open source is pervasive in other industries. And in healthcare it's negligible. Open source is about collaboration, and healthcare is about collaboration." But too often, he says, "The lack of interoperability has become a business model. Closed systems have become the proprietary model. Healthcare needs the opposite."

Rick Lee, CEO of Healthrageous, hopes 2013 will be a year in which we stop paying lip service to patient empowerment and actually do something about it. 

"We have to become adults about what information the consumer is entitled to and what information can only be obtained through your doctor," says Lee. With physician shortages looming and the emphasis being put on patients managing their own health, "We need to have the tools."

Access to information is key. "If I go to Quest or LabCorp and have a blood test taken to see how my diabetes is doing, I have to go make an appointment with my doctor in order to get those results," he says. "The lab shares them with my doctor, but not with me. How silly is that? It's just insane how we infantilize adult Americans and treat them like they're children that aren't allowed to see certain information. And yet we don't have enough doctors to share the information in a timely way with consumers."

With more than 40 million newly insured patients only exacerbating that physician shortage, Margaret Laub, president and CEO of Intelligent InSites, the developer of real-time locating systems, wants to see more technology being deployed to spur operational efficiencies. 

"For 2013, we look forward to healthcare providers embracing new enterprise platforms with open and flexible designs and innovative operational and clinical quality applications  -  and which are based on automated sensors and real-time data collection, mobile technologies and secure cloud computing solutions," she says. 

Paul Grabscheid, vice president of strategic planning at InterSystems, offered his own provocative hope for the coming year.

"My wish is to banish the term 'health information exchange,'" he says. "While exchanging data is useful, it's not nearly enough to achieve the quantum improvements needed in outcomes and efficiency."

Rather, said Grabscheid, "We need to focus on aggregating, not exchanging, data, in order to provide a complete, holistic picture of each patient. Achieving more accountable care models will take more than messaging. To ensure the best outcomes across all care settings, clinicians need to have the most current and most relevant patient information at their fingertips."

Finally, JaeLynn Williams, senior vice president at 3M Health Information Systems, said she hoped the industry would "free the data and open the workflow" in 2013.