CIO magazine senior editor Brian Eastwood has offered 12 predictions for health IT in the coming year.
- Lawsuits will be filed in response to the troubled Healthcare.gov rollout.
- The ICD-10 transition will cause the same amount of frustration and scrutiny in 2014 that Healthcare.gov caused in 2013.
- As mHealth expands, the healthcare industry will experience at least one major data breach in a mobile platform.
- The quality of consumer-facing healthcare apps will increase.
- Apple may enter the medical device market, possibly through a freshly-patented, iOS-embedded heart rate monitor.
- Many health IT services will be outsourced, including to overseas companies.
- One of the major electronic health record vendors will acquire another EHR vendor to expand its market share.
- Many EHR vendors, unable to keep up with meaningful use requirements, will drop out of the market.
- It will be a quiet year for meaningful use as ICD-10, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and Healthcare.gov command the majority of attention.
- The Direct Project will become the standard for health information exchange, if only because no reasonable alternative exists and healthcare providers need to start proving they can share data to meet meaningful use standards.
- In the dawning era of price transparency and apps that allow consumers to better manage their health, hospitals that don't offer affordable, efficient care will suffer.
- Meaningful use stage 3 will embrace new standards for patient engagement, lab orders, clinical decision support and quality measures.
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