Health Care IT 2011 Predictions

The end of 2010 is at hand and the beginning of 2011 will shortly be upon us. So, the litany of people making projections for health care IT in 2011 has started. I actually love reading people’s projections. They definitely give me something to think about.

I’ll personally be saving my predictions for a New Years post on EMR and HIPAA. So, watch for it over there.

Today I came across eWeek’s 2011 Health Care IT predictions article. In the article, Shahid Shah, CEO of IT consulting firm Netspective Communications and author of the Healthcare IT Guy blog makes five predictions for health care IT in 2011 (with my comments on each prediction):

1: Health care IT departments will increasingly adopt virtualization
I personally see virtualization being huge in hospitals, but not so much in small doctors offices. Unless their IT vendor is providing some sort of back end virtualization. Although the doctor will barely even know if they are or not.

2: Stand-alone medical devices will become more integrated in IT strategy and priorities
We’ve been moving this direction for quite a while. Unfortunately, I still don’t see the standards for medical device connectivity that will really make this explode. Plus, it’s expensive to replace existing equipment and a lot of the money is going to be going to EMR software and not new equipment.

3: Identity and access management will be essential tools in fighting data breaches
You can certainly make the case that single sign on solutions actually make fighting breaches harder and easier to occur. Everyone has always wanted single sign on (for obvious reasons). There are some vendors that are doing much better at this now. So, watch for it.

4: Health information exchange standards will become clearer
The HIE market has been really hot in 2009. The stimulus money for it will still be there and the need for it to happen to facilitate meaningful use stage 2 will push it along as well. I agree that NHIN and other government projects will move this along more than we’ve ever seen before.

5: Mobile health players will seek a business model
I still see mHealth as an extension of existing businesses and healthcare IT. I don’t believe we’ll see all that many pure mHealth companies find a business model. Although, there will be some in the consumer space that will do very well. I also see many mHealth initiatives in underdeveloped countries seeing some amazing results.

If you know of other articles predicting things in 2011, I’d love to see them.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

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