2012 Predictions for Health IT

by sharpjw1 3 min read

Like others (see Daniel Kraft) , I have my own opinions about what trends will be most influential for health IT in 2012.

Big Data and real-time analytics and decision support – IBM Watson and Explorys are in this space, others will follow and adoption will grow enabled by cloud computing, NOSQL/Hadoop and natural language processing
Continued focus on EMR adoption as more health systems pursue meaningful use. This will again be the main focus at HIMSS as well as other conferences
Social media in health care will continue to grow among patients as the e-Patient movement continues to gain in strength and public awareness and as advocates like the Reshape Innovation Center find creative uses to influence the future of health
Mobile health and apps usage will expand but what is needed is a way to integrate personal health information, such as, PHRs and apps that promote wellness and disease management. For health care professionals, apps and mobile devices need to be integrated into clinical workflow rather than being an adjunct or distraction
Research will be further enabled by EMR data as more academic medical centers develop data warehouses for research and quality studies and as initiatives like QueryHealth make it possible to combine data across systems and states using health information exchange and other tools

There are many more but these are the primary ones I will be following.