13 Healthcare IT Trends and Predictions for 2013

The healthcare industry is three years into meaningful use, an ambitious incentive program to convince hospitals and private practices to use electronic health record (EHR) software. Regulators are also bringing HIPAA, the 1996 rule protecting patient data, into the 21st century. The same goes for telemedicine. On top of that, healthcare finally seems ready to benefit from big data, cloud services and other disruptive technologies that have dramatically changed other vertical industries. But certain advances won’t come without a fight. Here’s a look at 13 straightforward, complicated and surprising predictions for healthcare IT in 2013.

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More than $10 billion in meaningful use incentives has been paid, but a RAND Corporation report said what we’re all thinking: With healthcare costs having tripled in the last decade, EHRs aren’t exactly saving money and improving efficiency. Meanwhile, meaningful use criteria are under fire for being too hard, thanks to unrealistic deadlines for avoiding Medicare reimbursement penalties, and too easy, thanks to a lax approach to EHR interoperability. (Neither argument is incorrect.) With the Office of the National Coordinator planning to look at meaningful use stage 3 this year, and with numerous high-profile organizations already scrutinizing stage 3, expect many meaningful use headlines in 2013.

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Step from the shadow cast by EHR market leaders Cerner, McKesson, Siemens, GE Healthcare, Epic and Allscripts—who control half of all EHR implementations—and you’ll see a few hundred EHR vendors clamoring for clients. Some focus on medical specialties. Others are regional. Others are home-grown offerings hospitals started selling. Not all will survive 2013. Some will be byproducts of EHR market consolidation, as vendors such as Athenahealth look to improve mobile EHR. In addition, EHR certification will separate wheat from chaff; companies that can’t meet the requirements to make the certified EHR product list will lose significant business. Finally, in a competitive market, it’s inevitable that some EHR vendors will simply close shop.