Healthcare IT & Technology-Enabled Services
Due to the spiraling costs of healthcare, there is increasing pressure on the industry to do the impossible—reduce cost AND improve outcomes… oh, and by the way while keeping or improving the speed of clinical treatment. Whether payer or provider, one of the only hopes the healthcare industry has to achieve this is to harness technology in its every incantation. And all of this done under arguable heavy government regulation (HIPAA, FDA regulatory restrictions on drug discovery, medical devices development 510K approvals, healthcare payer restrictions on reimbursability, and increasing healthcare provider oversight including HCAHPS & Press Ganey).
Healthcare IT and healthcare services present a unique opportunity to tackle the industry’s cost challenges across the healthcare spectrum. From moving care from centralized hospital setting toward homecare, connected health, telehealth & big data just to name a few. The migration from EMRs (electronic medical records) to PHRs (personal health records), to EHRs (electronic health records), and all that comes with this transformation is no small task. And it calls on all parts of the technology sector to help problem solve, spanning mobile, digital, social, payments, information management, security, cloud, and data visualization to name just a few. Healthcare industry associations like Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) (www.himss.org) have tried to keep pace with the explosion of demand for information sharing, best practices, and the latest technology breakthroughs that may enable “better, faster, cheaper” healthcare for all patients.