CIC Spring 2012 - Health IT

The world healthcare IT market is expected to grow from $99.6 billion in 2010 to $162.2 billion in 2015 making it an opportune area for competitors seeking attractive employment opportunities and those interested in commercialization of their ideas.

Understanding the healthcare industry structure can help in gaining an insight into the changing needs of its affiliated IT market. The healthcare industry consists of three major participants – the providers, the payors, and the consumers. Healthcare providers consist of large to small hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, research/educational institutions, and independent physicians. Payors consist of employers and various government and non-government organizations offering insurance policies, claim processing services, and the consumer themselves. Healthcare consumers include patients and caregivers maintaining their wellbeing, understanding their medical conditions, managing their medical data, and selecting and interacting with their medical providers and payors.

Many aspects of healthcare delivery are expected to evolve from a historically provider-centric model to a more patient-centric model including: preventive healthcare, remote patient monitoring, telemedicine, transitions of care between providers, and in-home wellness and healthcare. While the healthcare industry has a long history of innovation of patient treatments and monitoring, the industry has been slow to adopt IT technologies in their workflow. The growing costs of healthcare delivery in the administrative and IT areas (as well as treatments), represents an area ripe for operational efficiencies and improvements in care. The significant increase in demand for medical care has also increased the chances of error in diagnosis and claim settlement. This has led to the introduction of systems such as CPOE (computerized physician order entry systems), integrated systems such as enterprise-wide PACS (picture archive and communication systems), EHR (electronic health record). These not only helped reduce medical errors, but also helped improve the management of health related information. As the overall industry is moving towards integration, an insight into each participant’s needs could help system providers design overarching solutions which simultaneously cater many unmet requirements. Healthcare IT systems represent a cost effective solution for augmenting the clinical and administrative workflow of healthcare providers.

Viable entries in this category will demonstrate the ability to improve the outcome of care in general, and will address one or more of the following challenges in the Health IT domain which:

  • encourage consumers to participate in employee/member health assessments used to identify risk factors
  • evaluate and drive compliance using sensors (cars/home/mobile) and some form of immediate or situational feedback
  • create solutions which support ongoing communication with provider and consumer once they leave the physician's office
  • create solutions which help to break down the barriers to the sharing of EHR data between providers
  • create analytical and visualization tools for practitioners and consumers which integrate structured and non-structured data across the continum of care
  • create solutions which drive EHR use and engagement by providers and consumers
  • create tools for consumers to understand their options for choosing procedures, providers, and suppliers
  • create solutions which give consumers a holistic view of their well-being, and which promote a healthy lifestyle and decisions
  • create solutions for caregivers, family members, and others responsible for another person's health and well being which could leverage a personal health record
  • devise solutions for healthcare design that impact quality, safety, efficiency and patient experience including integrated ideas that link the built environment, information technology, equipment and healthcare processes.
  • Innovate solutions that utilize technology (mobile, cloud, infrastructure) to improve access to care, quality of care, and/or affordability and efficiency of care (prevention, education, diagnostic, treatment and aftercare).
  • Innovate end user device solutions that accommodate users with special needs (Ex: tourette syndrome, ADD, OCD, processing disorders, learning difficulties, aspergers, autism, physical and mental challenges , sight and hearing issues.)

Viable entries in this category will be based on data shared using open standard protocols, standards, and formats that can be readily adopted on a large scale (nationally) while maintaining the security, integrity, and privacy of all data transmitted, created, or recorded.