Rising Healthcare Costs Will Lead To Digitisation

Analyst group IDC has claimed that rising healthcare costs will see many hospitals seek to develop a data-driven digital hospital strategy requiring budget in 2016.

The firm made the statement as ones of its Health Insights Predictions for 2015, adding that operational inefficiency will become critical at 25% of hospitals.

In a bid to combat increased pressures to improve quality and manage costs, the research believes 15% of hospitals will create a comprehensive patient profile by 2016 that allows them to deliver personalised treatment plans.

The study adds that by 2020, 80% of healthcare data will pass through the cloud at some point in its lifetime, claiming providers will seek to leverage cloud-based technologies and infrastructure for data collection, aggregation, analytics and decision-making.

However, the research says, by 2020, 42% of all healthcare data created in the Digital Universe will be unprotected, but this needs to be protected because use of data and analytics continues to proliferate and more stakeholders are involved in the delivery of care.

It also predicts that by 2015, half of healthcare organisations will have experienced between one and five cyber-attacks within the past twelve months, one in three of which will be successful.

IDC claims this will make it a requirement for the health sector to invest in multi-prong security strategies to avoid disruptions to normal operations and incurring fines and notification costs.

More Focus On Consumer Needs

According to the research, the healthcare industry’s focus will shift to improving the consumer experience and so 65% of consumer transactions will be mobile by 2018.

The analysts recommend that organisations in the sector develop omni-channel strategies to provide a consistent experience across the Internet, mobile and telephonic channels.

In order to combat the costs associated with managing patients with chronic conditions, it is expected 70% of healthcare organisations will invest in consumer-facing mobile applications, wearables, remote health monitoring and virtual care by 2018.

IDC says this will create more demand for Big Data and analytics capability to support population health management initiatives.

IDC Aiming To Help Healthcare Sector With Forward Planning

“These decision imperatives provide a road map for healthcare organisations to think about IT investments that will need to be made and the impact they will have on an organisation, all of which can be used to support the planning and budgeting progress,” claimed IDC Health Insights group vice president and general manager Scott Lundstrom.

“Commons themes emerging from the [research] include the focus on consumer experience and engagement, the use of mobile and Internet-enabled devices and of course, the third platform technologies,” he added.

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