I recently attended a healthcare event in which I had the privilege to interact with physicians, administrators, CIOs, CISOs and other bright people of healthcare system. We all engaged in very interactive, insightful and open discussions. What amazed me that how all of the industry almost talks about same buzzwords, however, they all are approaching these in different ways. I am capturing the five hottest buzzwords that all of the industry is talking about-
1. Artificial Intelligence – No wonder that in the age of ChatGPT, the whole healthcare industry is excited, confused, skeptical, waiting and exploring on how AI is going to affect their hospitals. There are no common answers, and each provider is approaching the AI in different ways. Some are using AI in managing their patient inflows, some are using AI to reduce documentation and increase automation, some are using AI to enable doctors in making more informed decisions, some are using AI in building prediction models and all. One thing is, however, clear that sooner or later every provider is going to jump on the AI bandwagon just to eliminate the fear that they are not left behind. New use cases will keep emerging every day and new success stories will keep coming in the public domain.
2. Cybersecurity – As one of the presenters presented, in healthcare industry last year, the number of Global Threats detected was 80.44 bn, number of exploit technique detected was 80.18 bn and number of Malware distribution detected was 60.20 Mn. These numbers are just mind boggling. Another presenter talked about how Ransomware-as-a-service is coming out as a well organized and well funded industry. Cyber attacks are not just a work of handful of people doing some dirty tricks, it’s an industry in itself sometimes even being backed by certain national governments.
Experts talked about how to build cyber resilience in the systems by implementing network segmentation and reducing the human factor element by proper training, processes and policies. One thing that clearly emerged was that cybersecurity is still not being taken as a must-to-have items on CXO’s agenda and many of them still view them as a cost center. One survey reported that around 43% healthcare organization still do not have basic cybersecurity training in place. But the good news is that we are at the cusp of a change and cybersecurity is going to be a very hot topic in the days to come.
3. Interoperability – Interoperability came out as another very talked about topic. The need for sharing basic clinical data across national or even international boundaries is being driven by cultural, geo-political and care equity needs. Some of the use cases discussed were caring for a person who has travelled from Boston to Utah for skiing and gets injured; caring for a woman who has travelled from Texas to Colorado to avail abortion services; caring for a delegate who has travelled for USA to Asia and meets an accident. All these use cases require the local hospitals to fetch the basic clinical data about the patient from the healthcare system of patient’s home city/state. In the current stage, this is not that easy as many healthcare exchanges are still not fully connected.
The introduction of TEFCA (Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement) is a step in the right direction and industry is expecting the final guidelines to be released soon.
4. Telehealth – The COVID has left a lasting impact on the healthcare industry and telehealth and telemedicine services that gained lot of traction in the pandemic time are expected to become a permanent part of the entire healthcare industry. Telehealth is not only helping in broadening the health equity, but also breaking social stigmas related with availing healthcare services for certain kinds of diseases such as mental health. After COVID, use of telehealth skyrocketed in USA and according to a data published last year, around 46% patients in USA chose telehealth as a primary means of availing healthcare services. The overall telehealth market is expected to reach $460 bn by 2030. More and more hospitals will start providing telehealth services in the coming months, if they have not started doing it already.
5. Patient Experience – The patient engagement/patient experience is gaining attention from all the healthcare providers so much so that some are appointing Chief Patient Experience Officers in their organizations. This is a very welcome development. Patient experience is not only limited to scheduling an appointment or sending text reminders before the appointment. It is now expanded to cover the whole care continuum and expects to keep the person digitally engaged during their entire interaction with healthcare systems. It aims to transfer lot of power and knowledge in patients’ own hands.
Disclaimer – Opinions expressed in this article are of the author and they do not necessarily represent official views of author’s current or previous employers.
