If the past three years have shown us anything, it’s that healthcare organizations have the ability to weather opportunity even in the most challenging circumstances.
But if the pressures of pandemic times have eased a bit, their consequences will still be felt as we move into 2023. Hospitals and health systems are grappling with a complete storm. financial and operational challenges, even if clinical and population health requirements remain.
Add to this mix: new interoperability requirements, continuing to push the fast-growing data modeling barriers, industry-wide workforce shortages, threats pervasive cybersecurity and a shift towards home care. The challenges are many, but technology can help.
We asked business leaders from several health IT vendors what they see as they look ahead to the year ahead. Here’s what they said.
Looking for a more streamlined healthcare experience
“Patients – as consumers – expect care,” said Mudit Garg, CEO and co-founder of Qventus, which develops AI-powered care automation tools. Health works like everything else in their personal and professional lives. “They’re used to highly productive experiences enabled by AI and automation, such as personalized recommendations for movies, self-service flight bookings, and home automation.
He added: “Now, leading hospitals are adopting the same technologies that allow them to improve their care practices, creating more timely access to surgical care and reducing complications. hospital discharge delay, for example”.
“By 2023, patients will be more aware of the performance gap between hospitals and providers in their local area, which deliver highly effective care through,” Garg said. automated activities and those who do not provide this service”.
Building data infrastructure for VBC
Rahul Sharma is the CEO of HSBlox, whose platform and tools aim to help vendors manage value-based return initiatives. He sees progress being made towards responsible care, but says more needs to be done with data.
“To achieve sustained success in value-based care, we need digitized data and analytics at the individual patient journey level,” said Sharma. “To realize the full potential of VBC, healthcare organizations need to overcome inertia by transforming their technology and process infrastructure.
“Artificial intelligence technologies, along with machine learning algorithms in a robust data engineering framework that enable system-to-system integration with this digitized data, are needed to make the transformation this becomes a reality”. “In 2023, we will start to see a greater focus on build/buy/partner investments in technology infrastructure and human resources to help VBC programs succeed. .
Leverage the value of real-world data
Sujay Jadhav, CEO of Verana Health, which specializes in real-world data quality assessment tools, sees the need for similar information infrastructure efforts related to clinical research. ready.
“Real-world data, generated by applying advanced artificial intelligence capabilities (machine learning and natural language processing) to electronic health records and data sources,” said Jadhav. other data, has enormous potential to transform healthcare research and ultimately patient care”. “By combining curated structured and unstructured EHR data with RWD from sources such as claims data and diagnostic imaging data, we can benefit from a robust and timely view stronger insights into the patient’s journey, which in turn can open up insights into the disease process.”
In the near future, he said, “this will help provide doctors and researchers with the insights they need to accelerate cutting-edge treatment options.”
AI & ML helps manage new data warehouses
Dr Calum Yacoubian, director of NLP healthcare strategy at Linguamatics, an IQVIA company specializing in natural language processing, said artificial intelligence and machine learning applications will become increasingly indispensable. when ONC and CMS’s interception and data exchange mechanisms are applied in the healthcare sector.
“New interoperability requirements will exponentially increase the volume of data in healthcare, making AI-based tools a must-have for accurate risk assessment, identification, and risk assessment,” said Yacoubian. potential gaps in the care, effective management of population health, and important social determinants of health”. “As we continue to move towards value-based reimbursement models, there is an increasing need to manage the health of patients with chronic conditions, as well as identify and address disparities across patient populations. and provide more equitable and effective care.
He added: “To efficiently identify rich information from EHRs – which are largely written in human languages in non-discrete domains – we will see greater demand for AI techniques such as natural language processing to display important patient and population insights.”
Re-imagine patient flow and care coordination
“During the pandemic, health systems operating in silence feel the cost of an inability to coordinate operations and share resources in the form of compressed profit margins, frustrated employees and suboptimal patient outcomes – especially when care is extended beyond traditional settings,” said Angie Franks, CEO of ABOUT Healthcare, which helps health systems patient transfer manager said.
“As health systems evolve and expand to meet the changing needs of patients and providers, they must re-imagine patient flow by more accurately operating levers,” says Franks. needs, capacity and throughput to measure and improve care coordination across different settings”.
“As they start thinking about care coordination more holistically, they can scale up operations that will enable better use of their resources and deliver results,” she added. optimal outcome for the patient”.
Find a new approach to RPM, helping seniors stay at home
“With a growing shortage of the healthcare workforce and a rapidly aging population, the single-career healthcare workforce is becoming increasingly important,” said Janet Dillione, CEO of Connect America, a company that develops connected health. We simply won’t have enough support to meet the essential needs of seniors who want to retire at home.” home care technology.
“That’s where connected care solutions, such as traditional as well as innovative personal emergency response services and remote, at-home patient monitoring, come in,” she said. “These tools will be combined with enhanced data, AI, and in-home service relevance delivered by an expanding range of caregiving roles and skill sets.”
Emphasizes need for better data access, usability
Josh Rubel, commercial director of MDClone, which specializes in aggregated data and analytics, sees effective information management as key to success in a rapidly evolving environment.
“Healthcare is changing rapidly – business models, delivery methods and market positioning are all constantly changing,” says Rubel. “And, supply organizations are facing unprecedented financial pressures with demand and labor dynamics forcing many systems to rethink strategies, policies, and processes.
“In 2023, improving and re-establishing clinical and financial performance will be the main theme of the year,” he explains. “In healthcare leadership teams, there will be a significant increase in initiatives focused on using healthcare data to identify new revenue streams, optimize clinical capacity cures and service lines, and find exciting new medical advancements.To execute and compete, we’ll see healthcare providers embrace technology that helps their teams. they can access and use data easily.Healthcare data and its efficient, effective use will be indicative of successful healthcare performance in the future. “
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Healthcare IT News is a publication of HIMSS.
