EHR Moves to the Top Priority Lists of Hospital and Healthcare CIOs.
Electronic Health Records (or EMR), driven by the ARRA incentives, within healthcare practices and hospitals is expected to move to the top priority lists of CIOs.  With the adoption of EHR solutions, comes the need for network upgrades and optimization, infrastructure overhaul, security enablement, and bandwidth expansion.  These implementations will require the utmost attention to future IT planning and is become a critical factor when making IT decisions.  The push to implement EHR solutions and to modernize the current US healthcare system, is definitely expected to keep the CIO up for many nights in 2010.   

 

Health Care IT Staffing Gets  a Boost                                                                             
With physician and nurse shortages climbing, technology is being seen as a way to reduce errors, improve patient care, and provide better point of care and access more timely information.  Healthcare IT workers are not only needed, but they are getting a boost from the Federal Government, with the latest announcement from the HHS providing $80 million in stimulus funding for Health IT training and education programs.  

 

Healthcare Information Exchanges Finally Pick up the Pace    
Collaboration and the sharing of information steps up its game in Healthcare.  States have either already rolled out HIEs or will be in 2010.  Many states are still in the planning stages and have pushed HIE investment out into 2010 because of the recent economic conditions.  Those that have already made investments in HIE will began to optimize them and develop clear plans when it comes to sharing medical information and collaborating on the best in practice medical procedures and patient care.  The web and healthcare social networking are expected to become critical factors in improving information flow and sharing critical information. 

 

The $19 Billion in Health IT Stimulus Money will finally flow in 2010
The year 2009 saw delays and heavy paperwork and since the ARRA (American Reinvestment and Recovery Act) was announced, it has taken some time for funding to really flow into the hands of IT Managers and CIOs in hospitals and healthcare organizations.  Funding is expected to finally flow in 2010, and this means that IT projects and investments that have been put on hold will finally be implemented, yet priorities will need to be carefully evaluated. 

 

IT Vendors will Flock to Healthcare       
IT, Telecom, and Technology vendors are looking at Healthcare as one of the top "industries" in terms of technology adoption and investments.  Since many of the recent funding and government "hitech" attention, Healthcare is taking center stage as an industry to develop solutions for, and to develop creative marketing plans to better target.  Most vendors are ramping up their plans for the Healthcare industry as we speak, and many are putting Healthcare at top of their list to focus on in the next 12 to 18 months.  Cox Business recently announced Healthcare as ONE of the top opportunities to drive revenue to the company.  Even Wal-Mart is getting into the game with an EMR solution for small healthcare practices.  Compass Intelligence expects many more announcements to be made in 2010.


Other trends to look for in Healthcare next year include cloud computing, Mobile Healthcare and applications, and lastly cool technology tools and applications used in patient monitoring (vitals and more), remote/home healthcare, and virtual medicine.