IDC’s predictions for 2015

What’s on tap for 2015? IDC Health Insights, a global health IT consultant, presented its top healthcare predictions for next year, based on a new IDC FutureScape report.

Here are the following 10 predictions:

1. Operational inefficiency will become critical at 25 percent of hospitals, resulting in the development of a data-driven digital hospital strategy requiring budget in 2016. 
2. By 2015, 50 percent of healthcare organizations will have experienced 1-5 cyberattacks during the previous year with 33 percent deemed successful. This will require healthcare organizations to invest in a multi-pronged security strategy to avoid disruptions to normal operations and incurring fines and notification costs. 
3. 15 percent of hospitals will create a comprehensive patient profile by 2016 that will allow them to deliver personalized treatment plans.
4. By 2020, 80 percent of healthcare data will pass through the cloud at some point in its lifetime, as providers seek to leverage cloud-based technologies and infrastructure for data collection, aggregation, analytics and decision-making.
5. 65 percent of consumer transactions with healthcare organizations will be mobile by 2018, thus requiring healthcare organizations to develop strategies to harmonize experiences across the Web, mobile and telephonic channels.
6. 70 percent of healthcare organizations worldwide will invest in consumer-facing mobile applications, wearables, remote health monitoring and virtual care by 2018, which will create more demand for big data and analytics capability to support population health management initiatives.
7. More than 50 percent of big data issues will be reduced to routine operational IT by 2018, reducing the need for specialized IT resources to support big data.
8. With increased dependence on external partners for outsourced services, more than 50 percent of health and life science buyers will demand substantial risk sharing by 2018.
9. Payers will implement newer reimbursement models for 35 percent of their payments to providers in North America and the European Union within the next 36 months resulting in related investments in quality measurement, payment and billing systems.
10. By 2020, 42 percent of all healthcare data created digitally will be unprotected but needs to be protected, as use of data and analytics continues to proliferate and more stakeholders are involved in the delivery of care. 

"These decision imperatives provide a road map for healthcare organizations to think about IT investments that will need to be made and the impact they will have on an organization, all of which can be used to support the planning and budgeting process," said Scott Lundstrom, group vice president and general manager of IDC Health Insights, in a statement.