Future of Healthcare Report Presentation

The pandemic changed the future of healthcare, driving innovation and pushing the industry toward embracing new ways of providing care for patients. Continuing with this trend, healthcare business leaders are investing time and resources into expanding digital health, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and financial health.

HIMSS and its Trust partners, Accenture, The Chartis Group and ZS, have compiled the Future of Healthcare Report, which gathered feedback from healthcare organizations, clinicians, payers and patients on changes that may affect the industry within the next five years.

Their process for gathering this information included:

• Interviews with 12 subject matter experts from various healthcare roles to help identify challenges facing the industry today.
• Quantitative marketing intelligence that included 2,743 participants from healthcare organizations, clinicians, payers and patients.

The pandemic may have driven innovation in the healthcare business, but technology and value-based care continue to be a priority moving forward.

Digital Health Is Growing

With so many people staying home during the pandemic, digital health became a crucial tool in caring for patients, and its use will only continue to grow. Healthcare leaders are pursuing more growth in digital health – with 80% of systems reporting that they plan to increase investment within the next five years. And 58% noted they anticipate spending at least $10 million per year by 2026.

With that kind of commitment from industry leaders, digital health will continue to be an essential service in the future of healthcare.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning More Prevalent

The use of AI and machine learning is becoming more prevalent in the healthcare business – and many believe it will continue to improve the way patients can access the care they need. More than 60% of clinicians reported that while they don’t use these apps yet, they anticipate doing so in the future.

One hurdle, however, is the need to gain the trust of patients, since 60% said they were concerned about data breaches or malware attacks on their healthcare data.

Payer and Patients Concerned About Financial Health

The importance of value-based care was a key takeaway from the Future of Healthcare Report, with payers who responded to the survey noting that by 2025, they expect to see the following:

• More integration between payers and other organizations for value-based care
• Acceleration of integrated delivery
• Greater increase in treatment outside traditional channels

Patients showed concern over the prices of their medications and treatments – with 53% reporting they wanted complete transparency when it comes to healthcare costs.

Complementary Categories

All three major areas of the report complement each other when it comes to the future of healthcare – AI and machine learning will make it easier to expand digital health options for patients and improve organizational efficiency. This will in turn improve the financial outlook for healthcare businesses and keep the costs affordable for patients.

The views and opinions expressed in this content or by commenters are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of HIMSS or its affiliates.