Technology has been disrupting all industries for the past decade. In 2020, technology trends will continue to drive unprecedented changes in healthcare, as in other industries. At UHC Solutions, we’re paying close attention to this digital transformation. Here’s what healthcare leaders can expect next year regarding the technology trends affecting our clinical teams and the patients we serve.
Patient Consumerism
It will be the patients themselves that drive our adoption of technology next year. Health systems, FQHCs, and medical practices will be forced to meet consumers where they live, literally, by using tools like telehealth, and mobile devices to make healthcare more convenient, effective and affordable. Today’s healthcare consumers are used to Amazon’s instant delivery and responsiveness, which has set the stage for expectations of immediate, convenient, and transparent healthcare.
EHRs Second Act
In 2019 the news was official: Doctors hate their EHRs, also known as Electronic Health Records. Chief Medical Informatics Officer’s and third-party vendors are paying attention. That’s in part because the same studies show that patient satisfaction suffers when physicians are unhappy with the technology they frequently use throughout the day. Healthcare providers spent millions on these systems, but the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) says EHRs are a significant contributor to physician burnout. The answer, according to TransformativeMed, is to further our use of technology to improve workflows and the integration of siloed healthcare technology systems. Watch for changes in the user-friendliness of EHRs as well as additional tools to pull everything together, automate, and increase the efficiency of the technology we use.
Pay Attention to RPA
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) will hit healthcare in a big way in 2020. RPA is the process that large enterprise organizations use automatic basic workflows to improve the efficiency of the human workforce. Outside healthcare, RPA has begun to make a splash, saving large companies money and time by automating repetitive work in hospitals.
What About AI?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been all the buzz this year, but it hasn’t become commercialized as a product. In 2020, look for AI to make new inroads into the healthcare space, as outside vendors begin to capitalize on this promising technology. Right now, watch for more manual processes to shift toward these evolving time savers. In the near future, the sky’s the limit in healthcare.
Big Data Will Become More Actionable
Data analytics will continue to be hot in 2020. But the difference will be that health systems will begin to use data in new ways to influence patient behavior. Healthcare providers with a functional analytics team will influence business strategies to capture market share. 2020 is the year that these departments will break from just data capture and data strategy to data execution. Population health initiatives will be the biggest benefactor of these strategies. Health Systems will learn next year to harness their data to attract and retain more patients.
UHC Solutions understands these trends as they relate to both our candidates and our clients. The team itself stays at the cutting edge of technology of these technology initiatives to help our clients find top talent. Talk to our team when you’re ready to harness digital technology to improve your recruiting efforts.
