There has never been a more exciting time to be in healthcare IT. There has never been a more pivotal and stressful time to be in healthcare IT. IDC's latest healthcare IT predictions illustrate this and could not ring more true. U.S. healthcare spending as a percentage of GDP is almost double that of any other nation putting continued legislative focus on reforming the system and IT is truly in the driver's seat.
These predictions highlight the multitude of transformational innovations that will help us get to much needed efficiencies through proactive personalized care, intelligence driven protocols, machine to machine learning and scaling to deliver care outside provider settings.
IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Healthcare 2016 Predictions
1. Downward pressure of the healthcare economy will increase risk based contracting to 50% of provider payments by 2017 resulting in premium increases in the 2% to 3% range.
2. By 2018 industry cloud creation will be the top market entry strategy for tech providers and industrial companies, as leaders of IT and industry domain unite to tear down traditional barriers to entry.
3. By 2018 physicians will use cognitive solutions to identify the most effective treatment for 50% of complex cancer patients resulting in a 10% reduction in mortality and 10% in cost.
4. By 2017, surgeons will use computer assisted or robotic surgery techniques to assist in planning, simulating and performing 50% of the most complex surgeries.
5. One out of the three individuals will have their healthcare records compromised by cyberattacks in 2016.
6. By 2018, due to more frequent drug launches, pharma adoption of global launch sequence optimization solutions will grow by 50%, saving the industry billions in potential lost revenue.
7. By 2018, 80% of customer/patient service interaction will make use of IoT and big data to improve quality, value and timeliness. Virtual care will become routine by 2018.
8. By 2018, 30% of WW healthcare systems will employ real time cognitive analysis to provide personalized care leveraging patient's clinical data, directly supported by clinical outcomes and RWE data.
9. Reluctantly, through 2017 healthcare IT services buyers will consolidate IT services spending in the hands of the 5-10 largest service providers for each sub-vertical at double industry growth rates.
10. 2016 will see 3rd platform acute care HIS and EHR begin to come to market and early adopters will get started on digital transformation in 2017 - 2019.
Healthcare is beginning to harness and integrate previously untapped intelligence. There will soon be a tsunami of medical innovation driven by distilling intelligence from mass digitized PHI and the pressure for providers to deliver, and get paid on, quality outcomes. Improving patient care and creating better quality of life is what it is all about and for IT to be such an integral part of this evolution is what makes it such and exciting, albeit stressful, time to be in healthcare IT.
