4 IT Trends from the HIMSS 2019 Forecast | HealthTech Magazine

Healthcare is zooming forward at an accelerated rate of change, facilitated by a number of factors that make traditional healthcare models impossible to maintain.

Perhaps no one says it better than Russell Branzell, president and CEO for the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, who recently told HealthTech that the healthcare industry at large is at a major inflection point.

“Alongside large-scale changes like payment reform, the shift toward consumerism and globalization, we’re entering a new era of technology, fourth-revolution technology, which encompasses 5G, artificial intelligence, neural networking, drones and chatbots — not to mention that mobile devices have matured to the point where there are very few, if any, communication limitations,” he says.

And these are only a few of the pressures rising up to reshape the healthcare industry. The recently released HIMSS 2019 Healthcare Trends Forecast identifies more forces at work, including “value-based care, rising costs, health system consolidation, the approaching silver tsunami, regulatory pressures, increased consumerization, major technology players entering the market and the ever-expanding potential of digital health tools,” all of which are coming together transform healthcare business models.

So what will all these changes mean for healthcare organizations looking to keep up in the coming year? The HIMSS report identifies four major changes that providers and healthcare IT teams should look out for in 2019 and beyond.