Electronic Health Reporter

In its latest edition of Health Tech Report, a CDW publication, the publication brings up a few of what it calls the top health IT trends to come in the next few months including EHR user satisfaction and BYOD and its risks.

The trends — though some are obvious and some are aspirational — are all worthy of taking a closer look at. Some of the trends listed, like raising the bar on meaningful use and HIEs gaining steam, have already had plenty of attention, but are likely to continue playing a huge role in healthcare and health IT.

What’s particularly interesting from the perspective of the magazine’s editors is that there seems to be a real shift from getting healthcare into IT to hot the technology is changing the business of healthcare and opening opportunities and inroads not previously explored.

For example, trend number three is about the huge amounts of data — from that found in the health record to communication and images – and how it might potentially bury data centers and keep it from being optimized and as useful as might be. Likewise, trend four is making patient health information available for people to consume more quickly. In a nod to the Blue Button effort, the magazine points out that “data holders” are being to to place the Blue Button in their patient portals to make the consumerization of data easier.

This movement leads to the Internet of healthcare things in which patients continue to request/demand access to their data and want to have full access to their records. Studies suggest that doing so actually engages patient in their health and leads them to becoming advocates of their care, according to CDW.

With the plethora of high-quality information presented in the piece, the trend (No. 7 on the list) that seems the most interesting to me is the continued lack of quality professionals will be available to fill the market’s employment needs. This point continues to be well discussed, but as we move from the introduction to the implementation phase and beyond, the lack of experienced professionals is going to be a worthy foe indeed. Ironically, this observation seems to mirror what’s going on in the exam room in the lack of future caregivers to pick up future need.

According to the magazine, inadequate staffing resources pose to most significant risk to implementing IT in timely manner. As more systems need to come online and need to be managed, more staff will need to be hired to manage them. From my vendor-side perspective, this is certainly the case and has been for some time and likely will be for some time more, certainly more than the next few months as CDW suggests.

For your review, here’s the list in its entirety in case you’d like to see if the points reflect your own view of things to come.

• Trend 1 – EHR satisfaction and usability
• Trend 2 – BYOD brings benefits – and risks
• Trend 3 – Mammoth data growth creates monumental challenges
• Trend 4 – Make sure patients can VDT ASAP
• Trend 5 –The online path to health and happiness
• Trend 6 – Sharper focus on business continuity
• Trend 7 – IT talent a hot commodity
• Trend 8 – Raising the bar for meaningful use
• Trend 9 – Helping HIE reach new heights
• Trend 10 – ACOs gather steam