From facial recognition to the next generation of digital health tools, CIOs see the healthcare sector investing in more innovative new technology as a growing number of health systems further their advancement in software, sensors and other technologies that can enhance the delivery of care.
Becker's spoke to three health system CIOs who answered the question: If you had a crystal ball, what would you say is coming in the future for health IT that people aren't really talking about yet?
Note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity.
Rich Rogers. Senior Vice President and CIO of PrismaHealth (Greenville, S.C.). I believe we'll see rapid consolidation between payers and providers. The health insurance premium is the last profitable dollar left for providers. This will increase the need for greater analytics capability, interoperability and the next generation of digital tools for IT.
Randy Davis. Senior Vice President and CIO of CGH Medical Center (Sterling, Ill.). Facial recognition has untapped potential in healthcare as well as ambient scribing.
But, ambient scribing has significant problems. It's great if all you're interested in is a transcript, but not great if you want to quickly learn what the physician is thinking after a full context of data and conversation.
Companies like Decoded Health (among others) are going beyond ambient scribing and they aren't getting much press, but give it a few years and we'll see something truly useful for physicians.
Saad Chaudhry. CIO of Luminis Health (Annapolis, Md.). Plug-and-play platforms that standardize the data layer for other applications that can be installed on top of them, much like iOS and Android operating systems that allow for easy to install and uninstall apps.
These PnP platforms will be vendor-agnostic, allowing healthcare organizations to easily and fluidly install and uninstall any vendor's system or app per function.