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2025 Top 9 Trends and Priorities for Healthcare Delivery
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View Our Research and Analyst ServicesTop Priorities for 2025
01
Strengthen cybersecurity practices
The Challenge
Overcome cybersecurity vulnerabilities in healthcare.
Cybersecurity and privacy concerns are significantly impacting the healthcare sector. The massive Change Healthcare breach highlighted the industry's lack of attention to third-party systems, business continuity, and disaster recovery. This breach exposed a third of the US population to identity theft and caused a major healthcare clearinghouse to shut down for several weeks, putting organizations under financial strain. Data breaches have doubled in the last three years, and ransomware attacks have increased, affecting over 290 hospitals in 2023.
Why It Matters
Protect patient data and ensure continuity of care.
Robust cybersecurity measures are crucial to protect sensitive patient data, maintain trust, and ensure the continuity of healthcare services. The financial and operational impacts of breaches and ransomware attacks can be devastating, making it essential to address these vulnerabilities proactively.
The Solution
Assess and improve security maturity levels
Assess current maturity levels, identify trends, and improve weak areas to address cybersecurity challenges. This involves evaluating strengths and weaknesses, optimizing security processes, and developing a comprehensive security strategy.
Manage biomedical devices
Enhance security by managing biomedical devices, ensuring these devices are secure and do not become entry points for cyberattacks.
02
Effectively integrate AI and ML
The Challenge
Overcome operational and funding gaps in a traditionally structured industry.
Integrating AI and machine learning (ML) into healthcare operations presents significant challenges, especially in demonstrating clear ROI to secure funding. Many projects have shown vague productivity improvements, and few have been truly transformational. Additionally, implementing these technologies requires flexible funding requirements, addressing new governance challenges, operating model changes, and vendor management focused on capabilities.
Why It Matters
Unlock the potential of AI and ML for healthcare transformation.
AI and ML have the potential to transform healthcare by improving diagnostics, patient care, and operational efficiencies. Successfully integrating these technologies can lead to better patient outcomes and more efficient operations, but realizing these benefits is difficult.
The Solution
Conduct thorough ROI assessments
Focus on demonstrating the tangible benefits of AI and ML projects. This involves conducting thorough ROI assessments to justify the investment and secure funding.
Develop flexible funding models
Accommodate the unique financial requirements of AI and ML projects by developing flexible funding models. This ensures that the necessary resources are available for successful implementation.
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Generative AI Use Case Library for the Healthcare Industry
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Discover AI Use Cases in Healthcare
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Use Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to Improve Population Health Outcomes
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The Potential Financial Benefits of AI in Healthcare Organizations
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Getting to Automated Surveillance and Location Intelligence in Public Health Practice
03
Optimize the IT budget
The Challenge
Battle budget constraints in healthcare IT.
The industry is facing significant cost pressures due to constrained supply chains, increased staffing costs, and continued consolidation. These factors are resulting in tighter budgets and substantial cuts in IT spending. Additionally, required investments in security are putting further strain on IT resources within the healthcare industry.
Why It Matters
Maintain innovation and efficiency amid financial strain.
Financial constraints are forcing organizations to find ways to save costs while maintaining efficiency. Without effective cost management, IT departments struggle to support essential operations and innovate, potentially impacting overall business performance.
The Solution
Rationalize your applications
Identify and eliminate redundant or underused applications through an application rationalization process. This helps reduce costs and streamline IT operations.
Effectively prioritize projects
Focus on high-priority projects so that the organization can maximize the return on investment and maintain operational efficiency. This ensures that resources are allocated to the most impactful areas.
Build an Application Rationalization Framework
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Improve Healthcare Technology Outsourcing Success
Optimize IT Project Intake, Approval, and Prioritization
Jump Start Your Vendor Management Initiative
04
Unlock the power of seamless data integration
The Challenge
Solve the data-sharing puzzle.
Healthcare organizations, whether businesses or government crown corporations in Canada, face the challenge of sharing patient data across a shared service model across jurisdictions, using a single electronic health record system. Similarly, in the US, merging or acquiring businesses encounter difficulties in sharing and merging patient data. Both scenarios require strict regulatory adherence in terms of data reporting and cost justification.
Why It Matters
Unlock the value of data for effective digital transformation.
Ensuring proper data collection in the cloud, making it available for consumption, and having an effective curation and enhancement plan are critical foundations for success. This ensures organizations can leverage AI and other digital technologies to their fullest potential.
The Solution
Implement cloud-based data collection.
Implement a robust data integration strategy with cloud-based data collection. This ensures that data is collected efficiently and made available for consumption across different entities.
Develop effective curation and enhancement plans
Organize and improve the quality of data to ensure it is useful and reliable for decision-making processes. Having an effective curation and enhancement plan is essential.
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Build a Holistic Data Strategy for Your Healthcare Organization
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Interoperability: The True Power Behind the Digital Front Door
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05
Innovate healthcare services
The Challenge
Bridge the patient experience gap in healthcare.
Patients often don't receive the best experience because they may not know what good healthcare service looks like, including telehealth, digital front doors, e-consults, and more. Currently, only 39% of patients in Canada use patient portals, compared to 69% in the US.
Why It Matters
Patient-centric services drive loyalty and engagement.
Focusing on patient- or consumer-centric services is crucial for driving loyalty. Delivering services where and when the customer wants them and in a precise manner is key to improving patient satisfaction and engagement.
The Solution
Deliver virtual services
Enable a holistic healthcare model by ensuring patients receive the care they need conveniently and effectively across the entire care delivery continuum.
Provide digital front doors and e-consults
Implement digital front doors and e-consult capabilities to enhance patient access to healthcare services. These tools provide patients with easy and efficient ways to interact with healthcare providers.
Drive Customer Convenience by Enabling Text-Based Customer Support
Build a Chatbot Proof of Concept
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06
Embrace cloud technology
The Challenge
Navigate the cloud transition in healthcare.
The healthcare industry lags behind other sectors in migrating to the cloud, hindering its ability to leverage modern technologies, improve operational efficiencies, and ultimately adopt new operating models.
Why It Matters
Harness flexibility, scalability, and security with the cloud.
Moving data and operations to the cloud is essential for increasing flexibility, scalability, and data security. It also enables staging data for analytics and AI/ML projects, which are crucial for advancing healthcare services and delivery models.
The Solution
Secure data with the cloud
Ensure data is secure, protecting sensitive patient information and maintaining compliance with regulatory standards by leveraging cloud technology.
Prepare for future technological advancements
Embrace cloud technology to prepare healthcare organizations for future technological advancements. This shift supports better decision-making and improved patient outcomes by enabling the use of advanced analytics and AI/ML projects.
Document Your Cloud Strategy
Design Your Cloud Operations
Embrace the Inevitability of Multicloud
Identify the Components of Your Cloud Security Architecture
07
Tackle clinician burnout
The Challenge
Address the growing crisis of clinical burnout.
The combination of clinician burnout and an aging patient population is worsening the already difficult task of staffing healthcare facilities, indicating a long-term issue.
Why It Matters
Healthcare quality and satisfaction are at high risk.
Addressing labor challenges is crucial because it directly impacts the quality of care provided to patients and the overall satisfaction of healthcare professionals.
The Solution
Enhance the efficiency of patient management
Improve the patient management process by automating mundane tasks and reducing the workload on clinicians, allowing them to focus more on patient care and less on administrative tasks.
Streamline documentation processes
Use advanced technologies and better workflow management to streamline documentation processes and reduce the time clinicians spend on paperwork.
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08
Master regulatory compliance
The Challenge
Tackle the regulatory landscape in healthcare.
As one of the most regulated industries globally, healthcare has extensive reporting requirements to justify costs and demonstrate benefits to the population. Healthcare systems face significant data challenges due to the complexity of managing diverse and siloed data sources, legacy systems, inconsistencies in data, and the need for skilled professionals.
Why It Matters
Ensure compliance is the cornerstone of healthcare excellence.
Effective data management and governance are essential for regulatory compliance, accurate risk assessment, data security, improved analytics, and ultimately remaining competitive in a data-driven industry. Being able to leverage AI, ML and other advanced technologies is another critical factor to remaining competitive.
The Solution
Invest in data management and governance
Improve data quality, accuracy, security, and privacy, as well as overall data analytics, by investing in data management and governance. This will also improve regulatory compliance posture.
Streamline policies and procedures
Achieve cost savings by minimizing redundancies and optimizing resource allocation. This ensures that healthcare organizations can manage data effectively and comply with regulatory requirements.
Build a Reporting and Analytical Insights Strategy
Build a Data Pipeline for Reporting and Analytics
Data and Analytics Landscape Research Center
Negotiate the data and analytics disciplines to unlock the true value of your data.
09
Manage technical debt
The Challenge
Uncover the hidden costs of outdated technology.
Healthcare is an ever-changing environment with rapid advancements in treatments. However, healthcare systems often lag in updating technology and business processes. Technical debt is a common challenge in hospitals, averaging over 500 outdated IT applications per hospital globally. Unmanaged technical debt poses significant operational, financial, and reputational risks.
Why It Matters
Manage technical debt to enhance healthcare delivery.
Addressing technical debt is necessary to maintain efficient and effective healthcare delivery. It impacts the organization's ability to stay competitive, secure, and innovative. Proper management of technical debt ensures that healthcare systems can leverage new technologies and improve patient care.
The Solution
Identify and document technical debt
Conduct business impact analyses to understand the implications of outdated technology and identify and document the technical debt.
Prioritize technical debt based on impact
Focus resources on the most critical areas that need immediate attention, ensuring that the most significant risks are addressed first.
Manage Your Technical Debt
Make the Case for Legacy Application Modernization
Assess Infrastructure Readiness for Digital Transformation
Implement the Next-Generation IT Operating Model
Comprehensive Healthcare Delivery Industry Coverage
Testimonials
"Because security is so broad and involves so many components, we needed to build a multi-disciplinary, multi-faceted approach. Info-Tech has research on everything across the entire spectrum, and they have helped set the stage for our approach to security.”
David Schned, Director, IT Operations and CISO, LHSC
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