Industry Perspectives

The need for healthcare organizations to modernize their digital computing environment requires business and technology investments that can innovate and streamline patient and operations processes. Ensuring digital effectiveness requires insights into how medical facilities provide the best possible care through diagnosis and treatment. Modernizing digital environments that impact patient and billing experiences is essential for desired financial and operational outcomes. How a healthcare organization unifies its processes across medical services through its applications and for its workforce requires data science and analytics and is one part of the essential path forward to achieve its objectives.

A key technology trend is the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), a portfolio of medical devices and applications that link systems and patients using technologies that can be directly connected in a healthcare location. IoMT can be used to reduce unnecessary hospital visits and allows the transfer of medical data over a secure network. Interconnected devices that transfer events and data can be used to transmit usage and guide when maintenance or action should be taken.

The next trend is applying AI to Big Data to collect, analyze and utilize consumer, patient, physical and clinical data. Medical organizations can then apply artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to allow doctors and practitioners access to thousands of diagnostic resources to find possible treatments and increase positive patient outcomes. With the use of AI/ML algorithms, data is no longer limited to data scientists. The broader community can access a range of diagnostic resources that previously required specific clinical knowledge.

Another technology trend we have observed is digital therapeutics. These wearable technologies such as smartwatches monitor patients’ activity level, respiration, heartrate and more. Using digital therapeutics, patients can take a more active role in their health through applications designed for self-care and monitoring. This and other uses of software in the healthcare industry has created a new generation of life sciences technology that is helping to transform patient care and deliver better clinical outcomes.

Applying modern technological approaches when using applications and medical processes allows doctors and nurses to have a higher level of impact on patients and positively impact patient outcomes. The healthcare industry is working through a portfolio of investments to ensure that the technology used is both intelligent and effective. This requires a reexamination of existing approaches that are not designed with optimal patient experiences in mind and ensure that the complete set of information is available for those that need to serve the patient and themselves. By 2025, three-quarters of healthcare organizations will require unstructured data storage and processing capabilities in their data lakes to maximize the value of audio, video and image data.

Healthcare organizations should assess existing technology investments and their organizational readiness to meet the heightened pressure to deliver the most effective medical treatments and patient experiences at every point in the healthcare journey. Applying a new generation of digital platforms that engage patients and meet their needs from home, hospitals and outpatient care can decrease the strain the on the healthcare system. Ventana Research recommends that healthcare organizations dramatically shift their technology investments to more agile and modern digital and cloud architectures that support the hospital and doctor network and is interconnected to patience care efforts.