KLAS Research conducts assessments with hospital end-users of IT systems in all areas of health informatics. From these surveys, KLAS creates annual grades for which vendors are doing the best job of working with hospitals and delivering solutions that work well. At the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2023 meeting, the world's largest health informatics conference, KLAS spoke to both hospitals and vendors to identify the key trends in the market.
Bradley Hunter, vice president for value-based care and core solutions at KLAS Research, outlines the key, overarching health information technology trends with Health Exec at HIMSS.
He said the biggest problems boils down to staffing and finances. Hunter said health systems are looking for what IT can be leveraged to make the staff more efficient, to prevent burnout, and how it may help boost income. "Those are the two things that are top of mind for everyone," he said.
"There are a lot of health systems that are really worried about their margins, and sometimes negative margins. So, a lot of the conversations we have are about what can they automate. Then the next conversation is about automation versus orchestration. Automation is taking a single task and making it become a standard process. Then you have orchestration, which is taking a lot of processes and putting them into a workflow, or a journey, and automating all of those things," Hunter explained.
He said providers all come to HIMSS seeking ways to reduce costs and improve efficiency, but how each provider does this varies from health system to health system.
"There is no one right way to do this," Hunter explained. "There is no single road or way to reduce costs."
Some consolidate all their analytics into one place to look at the numbers across the enterprise to find ways to reduces costs. Others go the robotic process automation route to find ways to reduce costs and free up staff for other things. Still other health systems go the out-sourcing route to help reduce costs, he said.
"If they can find someone who can do something better, faster and cheaper, they would love to do that," Hunter said.
Leveraging analytics in healthcare informatics
"One of my favorite quotes is that one of the greatest inventions was that of the microscope, because it allowed us to see things we could not see with the naked eye. And the greatest invention of the 21st century is big data, because it allows us to see things that we cannot see with the naked eye," Hunter explained.
"There is so much potential with data analytics, because you can figure out things that you could not see before, but you have to know what you are looking for," he said. "And that is the biggest divide in the market right now, because we have the analytics, but we don't know what we are looking for."
Hunter said this is an area where vendors can really step up and help hospitals reduce costs and take better care of their patients.
Dave Fornell has covered healthcare for more than 17 years, with a focus in cardiology and radiology. Fornell is a 5-time winner of a Jesse H. Neal Award, the most prestigious editorial honors in the field of specialized journalism. The wins included best technical content, best use of social media and best COVID-19 coverage. Fornell was also a three-time Neal finalist for best range of work by a single author. He produces more than 100 editorial videos each year, most of them interviews with key opinion leaders in medicine. He also writes technical articles, covers key trends, conducts video hospital site visits, and is very involved with social media. E-mail: dfornell@innovatehealthcare.com