(PART 1)
Recently, Becker’s Health IT Report published the responses from 20 of the nation’s top healthcare chief information and innovation officers on their “bold predictions for health IT in the next 5 years.” It was an illuminating report, capped by Mayo Clinic Platform President John Halamka, MD‘s insight that, “We were talking about healthcare in 2030. But what we are seeing now is that 2030 is going to arrive in 2021 because COVID-19 has reshaped the culture and the policy around the use of technology, and anything we thought would take a decade to do is going to be an expectation for next year.”
FOLLOWING, IN 5 “MINI-BLOGS”, Mimi highlights some of the forecasters’ most salient points in four key areas:
– Remote first; Care everywhere
– Greater Patient Engagement on their Healthcare journey
– Implementing Medtech Solutions Beyond AI
– Aligning Healthcare’s Economic Buyers
Resoundingly, the dominant theme of most of the predictions as to where health care will be going – if not already arrived – was…
Remote first solutions
“Over the next five years, we will see IT departments start to develop ‘remote first’ solutions that will be focused on enabling clinical care from just about anywhere. Remote care that is agile enough to adapt to the next pandemic, social uprising or whatever else the future has in store for us,” according to Adam Gold, CTO of Children’s Hospital of Orange County. We’ll be focused not on thinking outside the box, but on ignoring the box all together.”
Joel Klein, MD, SVP/CIO of University of Maryland Medical School adds: “Half of all healthcare will be virtual.” On overcoming the two big barriers to adoption: “Payers: they may pay less, but if they pay enough, it will be enough.” And, “I want to see my doctor” will be trumped by the “convenience factor – once you really start doing it, it overwhelms most of the physical presence upsides.”
“THE #1 ACCELERATOR OF HEALTHCARE’S DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION: REMOTE FIRST; CARE EVERYWHERE” (PART 2)
Continuing my summary of Becker’s Health IT Report on “20 bold predictions for health IT in the next 5 years,” the most frequently mentioned predictions were about how telehealth will change our healthcare world.
For example, Deborah Visconi, President and CEO of Bergen New Bridge Medical Center (in New Jersey), wrote: “Telehealth will allow stable patients to hospital at home, and those with chronic ailments to be monitored at a distance. Wearable and mobile technology like smartphones, watches and voice-activated home devices will become common healthcare tools, monitoring symptoms, analyzing results and even alerting user and health care providers of oncoming illness. A patient will receive instructions to their phone or watch to make an appointment or perhaps to head to the emergency department.”
AND Eric Yabnlonka, CIO and Associate Dean of Technology and Digital Solutions at Stanford Health Care and School of Medicine, noted that wearables, combined with other biomedical devices, machine learning and artificial intelligence, “will continue to transform clinical research, treatment protocols and increase the virtual care capabilities of health providers, challenging traditional healthcare organizations to “compete with emerging retail and virtual providers in ways we have not experienced before.”
“This access to care everywhere will drive new partnerships among companies that don’t currently exist”…
…according to David Nash, MD, Founding Dean Emeritus of Jefferson College of Population Health (in Pennsylvania), “for example, genetic analysis companies and care delivery platforms will come together to remove friction and make care even more seamless and cost-effective.” Further, “There will be no distinction between in-person and virtual visits; instead, it will be access to appropriate care delivered by the right provider in the right care setting at the right time.” Dr. Nash also predicts:
“We’ll reach the point where calling it ‘digital’ health will fade from our day-to-day vernacular – do you call banking ‘ebanking?’”
“GREATER PATIENT ENGAGEMENT ON THEIR HEALTHCARE JOURNEY” (PART 3)
A second major theme revealed by the Health IT sages interviewed for Becker’s Health IT “20 bold predictions for health IT in the next 5 years,” is the potential for much higher levels of patient engagement.
As Laura Concannon, MD, Regional CMO of Amita Health (in Illinois), shared, “improving communication technology from the patient’s perspective will guide where healthcare will go next.” As she illustrated: “we need to become more nimble and meet them where they are. Whether it’s streamlining their in-person care using digital charting to provide more time with a physician or engaging with patients via text or email outside of their visit to ensure care plans are understood and followed.”
Tom Andriola, Vice Chancellor of IT and Data at UC Irvine, noted that “the pandemic put on steroids many of the current trends for technology and data-infused intelligence, a.k.a, AI, or as I like to call it for healthcare, ‘augmented intelligence.’” To enable patients to better manage their health journeys – and his own, he’s a big believer in allowing patients to build a “’digital health twin’ infused with data from many different sources provided by my health provider, my insurer and, most importantly, by myself.” He also was the only person interviewed who mentioned that “food is becoming digital too and is a primary driver of health through how you feed your microbiome.”
Digital Equity Urgently Needed to Improve Health Goals
Emily Webber, MD, CMIO of Riley Children’s Health (in Indiana), is a big believer that “the next five years will force the urgency for digital equity to truly improve health goals. Access to high-quality care will rely as much on your access to WIFI, as it does on the number of bricks and mortar clinics and hospitals.”
“IMPLEMENTING MED-TECH SOLUTIONS BEYOND AI” (PART 4)
The role of INNOVATIVE MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY – beyond AI – was not forgotten in Becker’s Health IT “20 bold predictions for health IT in the next 5 years.”
As Stephanie Lahr, MD, CIO and CMIO of Monument Health (in South Dakota) reflected, “an example of this technology would be the Nuance Dragon Ambient eXperience (DAX) solution. It not only captures each patient-physician encounter using sophisticated speech recognition technology, but also updates the EHR automatically, reducing administrative burden and allowing the provider to focus on the patient and not on their computer.” It turns out that Nuance, in partnership with Microsoft, has developed a suite of specialty documenting solutions to mitigate what the World Medical Association is calling a “pandemic of physician burnout, with 51 percent of physicians reporting frequent or constant feelings of burnout caused by a staggering administrative workload of electronic paperwork to document their patient care.”
We can hear your heart now
Patrick McCarthy, MD, VP, Northwestern Medical Group at Northwestern Medicine (in Illinois), is very enthusiastic about the applications of AI that “will be widespread from transforming our most basic tool the stethoscope, to wider distribution of advanced imaging acquisition and interpretation, and applying machine learning for individual patients to identify rare diseases, predict procedural risk, and determine best care pathways. A real-world example of AI-enhanced tools for clinical use is Eko. According to Dr. McCarthy, their suite of “advanced stethoscopes are powered by advanced machine learning algorithms that are FDA-cleared to detect AFib and heart murmurs. This type of practical AI analysis will greatly improve patient care, specifically by the early detection of the leading cause of death in the U.S., heart disease.”
“ALIGNING HEALTHCARE’S ECONOMIC BUYERS” (PART 5)
A final – but certainly not least important – area covered by Becker’s Health IT “20 bold predictions for health IT in the next 5 years,” was explained by Frank Ingari, CEO of Tandigm Health (in Pennsylvania). “For the first time, the three major economic buyers who drive U.S. healthcare – employers, the federal government and consumers – are aligned on what they want: lower cost, better outcomes and a better consumer experience. This alignment is already driving radical reinvention of the health IT industry based on methods well understood in the rest of the economy: user-centered design, personalization, and digital-first business models.”
Frank ominously concludes, “Wall Street is now funding the disruptors who embrace this change … presenting existential ‘lean in’ or ‘hold out’ choices for entrenched healthcare giants.”
And, doctors aren’t the only ones whose administrative workload can be streamlined, as Rich Temple. Vice President and CIO of Deborah Heart and Lung Center (in New Jersey), noted, “Robotic Process Automation will be a much bigger player to streamline the intense manual efforts by healthcare staff to perform functions such as prior authorization management and referral management. I also see AI being used to perform detailed analyses of diagnostic images, and supporting physicians in identifying patterns in images through pattern-matching with image databases from all over the world. While I know AI presents a concern to many in terms of ‘computers replacing humans doing jobs’, I don’t see AI as a threat to human employment, but rather an enhancer of humans doing their jobs by providing predictable and dependable tools that humans can do to perform their job duties even better.
By Mimi Grant, President, Adaptive Business Leaders (ABL) Organization – Round Tables and Events for CEOs of Healthcare and Technology Companies