IDC Releases Top 10 Health IT Predictions For 2015

IDC Analyze the FutureInternational Data Corporation (IDC) Health Insights, the division of IDC tasked with helping health businesses make more effective technology decisions by providing research and consulting services, recently released a report announcing its top predictions for health IT in 2015. Specifically, the organization outlines how rising costs of health care will prompt some organizations to embrace new strategies to increase operational efficiency.

In the report, IDC suggests that 2015 will be a year when so-called “third platform” technologies, including cloud, mobile, social and big data, are expected to gain purchase in health care. IDC predicts hospital CIOs will turn to these new technologies to offset rising health care costs.

The group also concludes that by 2020, 80 percent of health data will pass through the cloud at some point in its lifetime, as providers increasingly leverage these platforms for data collection, aggregation, analysis and decision-making.

In addition, IDC highlights an increased focus on improving the consumer experience, and projects that 65 percent of consumer transactions with health care organizations will be mobile by 2018. This will require health care organizations to develop new tools and strategies to provide a consistent experience across the Web, mobile and telephonic channels.

The report predicts that 70 percent of health care organizations worldwide will invest in consumer-facing mobile applications, wearables, remote health monitoring and virtual care by 2018, creating higher demand for big data and analytics capabilities to support population health management.

In a statement, Scott Lundstrom, group vice president and general manager of IDC Health Insights, noted, “These decision imperatives provide a roadmap for health care organizations to think about IT investments that will need to be made and the impact they will have on an organization, all of which can be used to support the planning and budgeting process.”

CNSI has already established its own products and solutions to facilitate some of these changes and to help organizations develop these necessary technology strategies. CNSI’s cloud-based solutions have proven successful following the launch of the interstate partnership between Michigan and Illinois to develop a new shared Medicaid Management Information Systems on the cloud. In addition, the myHealthButton mobile application is providing health care providers and patients convenient access to an individual’s health data and other available health resources.

What do you think of the IDC’s health IT predictions? How else can these organizations prepare for the changing landscape in health care? Tweet @CNSICorp to let us know!

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