Strata Rx 2013: Patients will drive healthcare transformation

BOSTON--“There is no major shift in technology that hasn’t been galvanized by consumers. The same will be true for healthcare,” predicted Claudia Williams, director of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT's state health information exchange program, at Strata Rx 2013.

Patient access to their digital health information will measurably increase in 2014 with the implementation of Meaningful Use (MU) Stage 2. Also, the upcoming spike of healthcare consumers receiving coverage under the Affordable Care Act and the Blue Button initiative, with participants at 80 million and growing, will change the healthcare landscape, she said.

MU's requirement for entities to provide the ability for patients to view, download and transmit their data “will unlock innovation and the most positive disruption.”

Also, baked in MU requirements is Direct, which facilitates information exchange. “This creates a digital dial tone that allows disparate systems to exchange information in a secure way simply by deploying Direct on both sides," said Williams.

With consumers having more choices of where to receive coverage and care, providers will need to keep up with their preferences, and that means better patient engagement and greater data access.

“Patients are the most underutilized resource in all of healthcare, and patients cannot play that role without data,” she said.