Healthcare is the major topic among businesses across the United States.
With the upcoming enrollment period for “Obamacare” (or officially the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) days away discussions about the change ahead seems to have reached a frenzied pace. For those not steeped in the healthcare industry, it can seem like handling this change would require everything else to come to a halt.
CIOs of healthcare organizations, hospitals, and insurers know that while this adds another complexity to the puzzle – their efforts to revolutionize the way health services are delivered can’t stop.
The goal for any Healthcare IT professional is to harness technology to improve patient care. Electronic Health Records (EHR), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPPA), the FCC’s Healthcare Connect Fund – these are all intended to help providers use technology to make a real difference in the level of care patients receive. These Federal initiatives don’t scratch the surface of what many providers have underway or better yet what is possible in today’s connected world.
Big Data, Cloud Services, Virtualization, BYOD – these disruptive technologies have already shown their ability to dramatically improve the business in other vertical industries. You’ll hear more from AdvizeX in the coming months about how these trends can be put to use by healthcare IT professional.
Here is a taste at what’s ahead…
- Big Data – It is early days and there are countless considerations, but the potential is there to harness the incredible amount of information to improve the treatments available to patients. For example – a researcher could potentially analyze data to determine what treatments are most effective in any particular condition or identify patterns of effects, etc. Mount Sinai Medical Center’s new addition, Jeff Hammerbacher, will lead a new computing facility using Hadoop to generate actionable data for the hospital and research facility.
- Cloud Services – Security, privacy, and compliance concerns are still top-of-mind for healthcare organizations when considering cloud architectures. As security and technology models improve, healthcare organizations are able to enjoy many of the benefits other verticals have come to expect from cloud including reduced operational costs, increased flexibility, and the ability to bring silos of data together.
- Virtualization – The benefits to a virtualized architecture for healthcare providers are well established. In an era of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) providers need instant access to patient data without being encumbered by a physical device. Strict privacy and information-access guidelines make tracking an individual network usage and activity another important benefit in a virtual environment.
- BYOD – Mobility is crucial for today’s medical professionals. The challenge to meet this requirement skyrockets with the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend. Providers want and need to allow real-time access to EMR and given the highly mobile nature of the medical profession where the demand occurs is unpredictable. That said, patient security is paramount to any provider. Devices can be stolen. Patient data can be hacked. It isn’t the end of the road for BYOD there are options including Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Mobile File Management (MFM) solutions.
We’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg on the upcoming technology trends that are important for healthcare. Be sure to follow the AdvizeX blog for more information on Healthcare IT or contact us to arrange an executive briefing. At AdvizeX Technologies, we have more than three decades of experience helping healthcare providers harness the latest technology to improve their businesses. ▪