Chief medical informatics officers and chief nursing informatics officers are gaining new powers and prestige in the health IT sector. Becker's reached out to nine CNIOs and CMIOs to learn what the top trend in health informatics will be in 2023.
Editor's note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity.
Benjamin Hohmuth, MD. Chief Medical Informatics Officer of Geisinger (Danville, Pa.): Informatics must prove its value to the organization. Automation, labor arbitrage, working closely with the revenue cycle to tighten and increase the reliability of workflows, and generally solving meaningful business problems that translate into dollars saved, revenue earned, clinicians retained, and health outcomes improved [are among the ways this can be done].
Beth Kushner, DO. Chief Medical Informatics Officer of St. Joseph's Health (Paterson, N.J.): Extending the clinical setting will be the top trend for 2023. Healthcare is no longer confined to the walls of a hospital; now healthcare needs to be agile and nimble and present in a patient's home. Healthcare informatics needs to be flexible and able to address those needs. With that, we need to focus on making informatics personalized and accessible to the individual consumer.
Gregg Nicandri, MD. Chief Medical Information Officer of University of Rochester (N.Y.) Medical Center: Though the digital transformation of healthcare and patient experience continues to be highly important, I think the top trend in health informatics in 2023 will be healthcare provider burnout. Increased digital access has resulted in additional work for healthcare providers, and the infrastructure, support, and payment models have not kept up. In 2023, this will reach a breaking point. Many providers go home at 5 or 6 p.m., to then spend upwards of 3 hours per night taking care of an increasing volume of documentation, patient messages, insurance, and pharmacy queries. They are now finding that even this isn't enough. Many have started to decrease clinical volume so they have more time for these tasks, which decreases patient access and satisfaction. It is easy to see why nationally we have 25 percent of providers indicating they will be looking for jobs outside healthcare in the next year and 35 percent indicating that they are looking to retire early. We need to find ways to redesign the job that brings joy back to providing healthcare.
James Blum, MD. Chief Medical Information Officer of University of Iowa (Iowa City): The top trend in 2023 will be population health management.
Mark Perkins-Carrillo, MSN, RN. Chief Nursing Informatics Officer of Moffitt Cancer Center (Tampa, Fla.): As the Chief Nursing Informatics Officer at Florida's only comprehensive cancer center, we are focused on reducing nursing burnout. The current and worsening nursing shortage has taken a toll on bedside nurses. Cancer care is complex while both emotionally rewarding and draining. Combined with staffing concerns and documentation burden, the bedside nurse will be forced to decide between providing high-quality care and accurately recording care rendered. The desire to perform top-notch care despite resource limitations is fueling nursing burnout. The informatics team will engage nursing staff using strategies such as virtual nursing and voice-assisted documentation to combat the current struggles of bedside nursing.
Neal Chawla, MD. Chief Medical Informatics Officer of WakeMed (Raleigh, N.C.): While many are becoming increasingly interested in artificial intelligence, I don't believe 2023 will be the year we see an explosion in the practical application of AI technology. A trend that will continue is increasing the digital front door so patients and customers can find new and better ways to connect with us. Another trend continuing is to build or optimize your population health IT framework to care for populations on risk-based contracts.
Philip Styne, MD. Associate Chief Medical Informatics Officer of AdventHealth Altamonte Springs (Fla.): The top trend for 2023 will be how to get data that is actionable, data that can drive down cost and drive up quality. Again, value is quality divided by cost. Data accumulation without results is worthless. If we, the informaticists, can't start showing some return on investments, even if it is the ephemeral quality everyone expounds to, we are going to be the lost hope. It will be difficult because quality is hard to measure.
Scott MacDonald, MD. Chief Medical Information Officer of UC Davis Health (Sacramento, Calif.): In the next year, I hope to start seeing some modest but meaningful uses of machine learning. I don't think it will be transformative as the salespeople say it will be, but transformer technology is getting impressive and may start to provide some real value.
Teresa Niblett, DNP, RN. Chief Nursing Informatics Officer of TidalHealth (Salisbury, Md.): These trends will continue in 2023: honing in on eliminating waste, reducing costs, and improving quality, safety, and patient and caregiver engagement.