10 Tech Trends in Healthcare @ValaAfshar @bobzemke, @carey_mercier

Smart PHONES

The iPhone has been a catalyst and the lead smartphone adopted in healthcare. W

It was a wakeup call that small form factor devices could become so widely adopted in clinical care. Wi-Fi

Application development leverages smartphone hardware cameras, accelerometers, and Bluetooth. Wi-Fi

There are high expectations for the enterprise environment to be available on a mobile platform. Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi ADOPTION

For many hospitals the WLAN now has more connected devices than the wired LAN.

It started with workstations on wheels but now encompasses guest Internet access, medical devices, phones, video units, RTLS, and on and on.

Since Wi-Fi availability is expected, medical devices are getting smarter where Wi-Fi connectivity is a requirement.

Bring Your Own DEVICE

Smartphones + Hospital Wi-Fi = need for a BYOD policy and mobile device management solution. + =

BYOD has been the disrupter to how technology solutions are evaluated and roll out by hospital IT.

A revolution took place and it is forcing IT to focus more on customer service delivery rather than technology control.

We are moving towards a cloud infrastructure supporting a range of devices dictated by the consumer.

Government Mandates

HITECH, HIPAA, Meaningful Use, and ICD 10 have forced healthcare institutions to invest heavily in IT infrastructure, talent, and application systems.

These mandates have the potential for being the catalyst to big data analysis.

Voice over Ip

The emergence of VoIP has allowed healthcare institutions to leverage the same IT infrastructure backbone to support data, and voice traffic.

More importantly it has created communication flexibility that started with mobility and is now evolving into applications.

Social Media Platforms

Emergence of social media is allowing hospitals to reach out to staff, patients, and the general public in new ways, and to reach younger audiences.

Next we will see social evolve into flexible communications options for hospitals and care teams.

Virtualization

Virtualization is increasing the consolidation of services onto dedicated server farms and a high level of availability, and redundancy.

IAAS and PAAS are emerging and soon we may even see virtual cloud and virtual storage on the rise.

IPBased Medical Devices

Medical devices are evolving at an unprecedented rate, so much so that the 510K process is in dire need of an update in order to ensure that medical devices can use the latest in technological advancements.

As these devices become more integrated into the network, human error is becoming increasingly contained which ultimately decreases re-admission rates.

The network infrastructure and backbone must be agile enough to accommodate the explosive growth of connected devices and network traffic as we move towards an era where every device is communicating on the network.

mHealth

mHealth facilitates a spectrum of ways to leverage mobility, and mobile devices to improve clinical work flows and outcomes.

These range from video remote interpretation, to telemedicine and remote care use cases.

The next step will be adoption of wearable technologies.

Big Data

The infrastructure and applications everyone investing in holds the promise of being leveraged for big data analysis, trending, more insight for improved clinical results.

Our challenge is how to share the information while protecting patient privacy.