By Mobile Health Matters
Twitter: @AirStripmHealth
The healthcare IT industry enters 2018 with a lot of potential, along with the need to overcome structures that have historically stunted progress. What is on our health IT wish list? AirStrip is feeling optimistic about the industry’s direction in terms of broader collaboration for building up truly interoperable systems to improve patient care, and overall health system stability.
“The best forward progress would be heralded by the large EMR vendors getting on board with interoperable, open systems and allowing their clients to choose products that are tailored to their own workflows. While well intentioned, legacy vendors continue to try to be everything to everyone, on the desktop and in the mobile space. Because no one vendor can do everything perfectly well, the key to filling in holes in patient data and care coordination is the incentive to collaborate. Smaller, more agile companies can more effectively satisfy the needs of health systems when it comes to interoperability and data aggregation that the larger vendors are just beginning to tackle. In 2018, I wish for stronger industry collaboration to improve seamless care delivery and physician satisfaction.” – Nancy Pratt, Chief Operating Officer, AirStrip
“The past few years in the health system space have been defined by instability and turmoil, as evidenced by the volume and magnitude of mergers and acquisitions. Their constant contemplation on their next strategic or financial move negatively impacts the remainder of the industry food chain. With a history such as this, the industry enters the New Year with a looming sense of uncertainty and insecurity. My wish for 2018 is for health systems to crack the code and finally find their operational cadence. With large health systems driving the majority of the industry’s activity, the ability of health IT companies to be profitable depends on their stability. I hope that this New Year brings notions of constancy, rather than dramatic cost cuts, and overwhelming initiatives.” – Angela Pierce, Chief Financial Officer, AirStrip
“The interoperability innovation and regulatory progress made in 2017 are promising, but my wish for 2018 is more functional interoperability. This continues to be a daily concern for clinicians and healthcare leaders. The efforts to move information more seamlessly and with purpose must continue as there are still too many disparate medical systems that are not in sync and unable to access critical patient data when needed. This creates inefficiencies in clinical workflow, fragments patient information and increases healthcare costs. ” – Aparna Bala, Clinical Transformation Consultant, AirStrip
Frustrations have been rising across the healthcare continuum, stemming from the lack of collaboration among various stakeholders, and the industry’s generally chaotic nature. 2018 offers a fresh start to address these issues proactively, and to begin realizing the full potential of health IT.
This article was originally published on Mobile Health Matters and is republished here with permission.