Although President George W. Bush promised Americans in 2004 that they would have access to electronic health records (EHR) within 10 years, it took the 2020 pandemic to accelerate the digital transformation in healthcare services, including patient portals, electronic prescribing, telehealth and other technological advances.
Patients now receive more individualized health care. Medical errors and medication errors are reduced. Healthcare providers are streamlining their workflows with computerized provider order entry (CPOE), entering and sending treatment instructions electronically. The U.S. healthcare market is projected to reach $5.7 trillion by 2026, so the potential for efficiencies and cost-savings is immense. It appears that the pandemic-fueled health informatics transformation is poised for even greater gains in 2023.
That is what is attracting non-healthcare companies to the sector. Amazon announced in 2022 that it plans to acquire One Medical, a primary care network, and is launching Amazon Clinic in 32 states to provide virtual care and electronic prescribing. Google Health struck a deal with iCAD to integrate its AI into iCAD's breast imaging technology.
The health IT sector includes the electronic systems that health care professionals — and increasingly, patients — use to store, share and analyze health information, including EHR, electronic medical records (EMR, which are accessible only to patients) and electronic prescribing, or e-prescribing. There are also innovations in AI, telehealth and wearable technologies that promise to improve the diagnosis and monitoring of health conditions. All of this is made possible with cloud computing, a critical part of IT modernization.
Related reading: Why IT Modernization is Mission Critical
Nowhere are these innovations more important than in the federal government, because of its goal to reduce the so-called “technical debt,” or the cost of operating outdated computerized systems. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) works with SDV INTERNATIONAL to address technical debt in health information management, a priority because healthcare is critical to maintaining the warfighting force and serving veterans.
This article will look at trends and innovations in different areas of healthcare information technology and, by way of illustration, some of the ways SDV INTERNATIONAL is helping DoD to upgrade its health information technology.
Related reading: 3 Reasons to Prioritize Health Information Management
1. INTEROPERABILITY
As far back as 2004, the JASON Task Force recommended an end to siloed legacy systems that limit how well health information systems talk to one another. Fast forward 2022, and more health organizations are adopting “application programming interface,” or API. At its most basic level, APIs allow one software program to talk to other programs and devices, opening up data between organizations, including electronic health records.
With APIs, patients can use apps to monitor and discuss their health goals with healthcare providers through patient portals. Clinicians use apps to expand their EHR capabilities through clinical decision support (CDS) tools for better patient care.
SDV INTERNATIONAL partners with the Veterans Administration (VA) to improve healthcare delivery, information management, and sharing within the nation’s largest integrated healthcare system. APIs are key to electronic health information interoperability between the VA and the private healthcare sector through the Veterans Choice program and to veterans’ ability to access and manage their own electronic medical records.
2. PATIENT PORTALS
Healthcare consumers use patient portals to retrieve lab results, ask questions, and update patient profiles and insurance information. Some patient portals allow patients to schedule appointments and pay bills directly through the system. Nearly 40 percent of individual patients nationwide accessed a patient portal in 2020 — a 13% increase since 2014.
In 2023, more people are likely to take advantage of patient portals connected to their doctors' electronic medical record systems, which (thanks to APIs) may also be able to connect to other health systems the patient previously used or is currently using. Healthcare providers are being encouraged in the coming year to use incentives to get more patients to use portals.
The VA is rolling out its new patient portal, My VA Health, over the next several years as part of its EHR modernization. The new system will allow VA clinicians, staff and community healthcare providers to access a veteran’s full medical history on a single platform without the vet or their provider needing to track down previous health information.
3. VIRTUAL CARE AND TELEHEALTH
Under the Public Health Emergency (PHE) order enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) greatly expanded reimbursable services that could be delivered virtually. For 2023, the scope of telehealth services covered by CMS has narrowed.
Still, emerging technologies will allow the expansion of services such as “hospital in the home” and “ICU in the home,” which may be covered by private insurers. SDV INTERNATIONAL is currently developing telemedicine and telehealth solutions for TRICARE, the healthcare provider for uniformed service members, retirees and their families.
4. REMOTE MONITORING AND WEARABLES
Remote monitoring of a patient's condition is one of the technologies that enables virtual and telehealth care. For example, remote cardiac monitoring allows health information technicians to monitor patients with suspected arrhythmias in their homes, cutting down on office visits.
Nuvance Health is piloting an at-home remote monitoring program for patients with mild cognitive impairment. Sibel Health, which was spun out of the John Rogers Research Group and Querry Simpson Institute for Bioelectrics at Northwestern University, is scaling up its FDA-cleared ANNE® One platform, a wireless, flexible and rechargeable monitoring system for the measurement of multiple vital signs.
5. CYBERSECURITY
In 2021, health data breaches affected 45 million individuals, up from 34 million in 2020, according to data reported to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The healthcare sector suffered about 337 breaches in the first half of 2022 alone, according to Fortified Health Security’s mid-year report.
SDV INTERNATIONAL developed a security control overlay for a major pharmaceutical company’s prescription digital therapeutic for substance and opioid abuse among veterans. That solution is compliant with federal patient health information security, but a more holistic approach may be developed in 2023.
Legislation introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate in 2022 would direct the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to collaborate with Health and Human Services to protect Americans' health data from cyberattacks.
Related reading: Zero Trust: How to Reach Maximum Security
6. BLOCKCHAIN
With increasing use of EHR by physicians, testing laboratories, pharmaceutical companies and hospitals, data security is a major focus. Blockchain technology allows the preservation and transmission of data between different health service providers in an efficient, effective and secure way.
As an example, SAFE Health Systems, Inc. worked with Hedera when it was developing a health platform that enables the rapid deployment of specialized health applications that reduce costs and improve health outcomes. Hedera logs an immutable and verifiable log of patient information and identifiers while preserving end-user privacy.
7. DIGITAL TWINS
Digital twins are dynamic digital versions of a product, process or, in the case of healthcare, a person. This area of health information technology is expected to reach more than $48 million by 2026. Models or simulations of body parts can be used to test drugs and treatments, reducing the time-to-market of new therapies without endangering lives.
Kaiser Permanente uses digital twins through a system that improves patient flow within a hospital. It achieves this by combining structured and unstructured data to build a more complete view of each patient to anticipate their needs. Roche uses digital twins to help securely integrate and display relevant aggregated data about cancer patients into a single, holistic patient timeline.
8. BIG DATA AND AI
Imagine being in healthcare research and having at your disposal all medical records ever accumulated anywhere. With big data analytics, the process of finding new therapeutics could really pick up speed.
Big data can provide several important benefits to health care, including a lower rate of medication errors, predictive care for chronic conditions, and more accurate staffing. It’s also the fuel that powers artificial intelligence (AI), which needs tons of data to analyze and discover useful insights. For example, AI’s systematic review and pattern recognition can give cancer patients access to personalized therapies tailored to their genetic makeup and lifestyle.
9. CLOUD ADAPTATION
The exponential growth in big data is among the factors driving more healthcare systems to the cloud. Approximately 30% of the world’s data volume is being generated by the healthcare industry, far too much to be stored in physical data centers.
Third-party cloud-based services are also being used more by physician practices to handle administrative tasks, such as billing. When DoD and the VA needed payment processing and record-keeping to be maintained and up to date, SDV INTERNATIONAL delivered cloud-based healthcare payment processing and health information management solutions.
10. COMPLIANCE
For healthcare organizations, compliance means observing a crazy quilt of laws and regulations at the federal and state levels. For example, HIPAA regulates some aspects of medical privacy, but the Federal Trade Commission covers privacy for medical apps. In the wake of the Dobbs decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, new questions have arisen around privacy of records when it comes to women’s reproductive health.
Under a portion of the 2016 Cures Act, as of 2021 health organizations must provide doctor’s notes and test results to patients as soon as they are available. This can be done efficiently only through patient portals. Clearly, health information technology programs are key to an organization’s ability to maintain compliance. A growing number of healthcare organizations will be outsourcing release of records to third-party providers in 2023.
11. HIRING AND STAFFING
HIT programs will only be as good as the health information professionals implementing and operating them. Many healthcare organizations are adding chief data officers (CDO) to the executive team to oversee governance, analytics and security of the data, making data-driven decisions possible.
Another important role is that of health information technician. The registered health information technician (RHIT) requires at least an associate degree in health information management and successful passage of a certification exam. RHITs are in high demand, and we may even see healthcare organizations willing to pay for their education and certifications.
THE FUTURE OF HEALTH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Healthcare organizations, physician practices and other health care providers face myriad daunting challenges when it comes to health information technology and health information management in the coming year. SDV INTERNATIONAL has been providing complementary, often integrated professional solutions to military and civilian healthcare organizations since 2008, and we would like to hear how we can serve your organization.
Contact SDV INTERNATIONAL today at our website, or by calling 800-738-0669 or emailing info@SDVInternational.com.