Burnout is something that can slowly creep up on you but take a long time to crawl out of. This serious problem is something that happens with you are overworked and overstressed from the problems you are tasked with at work. In the world of healthcare, where we are constantly looking for ways to make things better, it is no surprise that we are facing a high burnout rate. While burnout is hard to recover from, it is possible. Taking time off and finding things that you enjoy and are excited about are key to letting your brain reset and being ready to get back to work.
While there are countless problems and struggles in healthcare, there are a lot of ideas and technologies right now that are working to make things better. So let’s take a moment to step away from our problems and stress to focus on the health IT trends that we are excited about! We reached out to our wonderful Healthcare IT Today Community and asked them: which health IT trend has you most excited and why is it exciting? The following is what they had to share.
Neil Batlivala, Co-Founder and CEO at Pair Team
Soon, we’re going to start to see large language models (LLMs) making it very cheap for translation services that can be brought directly to the point of care. For example, through the use of an LLM, a Greek-speaking patient could seamlessly work with an English-speaking doctor in real-time, at a near-zero marginal cost. Also, we are seeing LLMs making it very cheap to get access to clinical support but not decision-making (yet) so we should expect to see a wave of AI coordinators, not AI doctors (yet). Another rising use for LLMs in health IT will be around contract and financial management and other back-office administrative tasks for clinics.
Dan McDonald, CEO at 86Borders
SDOH data will continue to be a key focus for health IT professionals and teams in 2024 but with a new requirement: the ability to analyze collected social determinants data and deliver actionable insights. Health plans, hospitals, health systems, and medical groups have achieved much success in capturing SDOH data over the past several years. However, the aggregation and analysis of SDOH data lags. Health plans must determine how to address the identified disparities and barriers hindering a member’s healthcare priorities by assessing SDOH data, trends, and patterns.
The 2024 trend for SDOH-focused organizations is to prioritize a member-first approach by advocating for systems that automatically generate suggestions for consideration by social workers, care coordinators, and organization leaders. Finally, internal and external data sources will continually come together to broaden member SDOH profiles in the new year.
Sonia Singh, Chief Insights Officer at AVIA Health
The rapid advancement of ambient monitoring technologies is set to revolutionize healthcare, particularly as these devices become more affordable, widely available, and enhanced with artificial intelligence. This will include tools such as temperature and humidity sensors, blood pressure sensors, thermal vision cameras, and fall risk detection sensors, alongside Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS)—while home settings could include monitoring Activities of Daily Living (ADL), integrated consumer wearables, and other home-based monitoring systems.
The crux of these technologies lies in their ability to form a “network” of ambient intelligence to drive more comprehensive management of patient care. This is a key part of the move toward a more proactive, personalized, and preventative approach to health and wellness, while simultaneously leveraging the power of AI to anticipate and respond to patient needs more effectively.
Blake Richards, CEO at Elucid
There has been value created over the past decade from AI tools increasing efficiency in numerous healthcare workflows, but a much larger opportunity is now being realized. Medical providers are now leveraging multiple AI tools and platforms to directly aid clinical decisions with new information that up until now was very challenging to attain non-invasively, or required an invasive diagnostic procedure. This type of innovation, when executed at a high level with rigorous supporting clinical data, can be game-changing for providers and patients. We are only starting to scratch the surface of what is possible, but we can expect the trajectory to be rapid over the next several years.
Ram Krishnan, CEO at Valant
AI and large language models (LLM) are set to explode in healthcare. However, providers and healthcare leaders will need to sift through what is real and what is not. A lot of announcements, partnerships, and hype surround AI but over the next year, it will have minimal real measurable impact. We’ll find that AI tools are often only 70% effective and while good for some tasks, will leave frustration with a failed promise to deliver. Concerns about compliance and audit flags will emerge from some public examples. Through the noise though we’ll learn where we’re most able to drive outcomes, not just for provider and practice productivity but for patients directly.
By and large, AI usage will be by individuals procuring their own tools for specific purposes (think intake, progress notes, and treatment plans), and can potentially assist with shortening the onboarding of new providers and professionals in our market. While organizations experiment with AI to help pair patients and providers more effectively, creating decision-support models, and ensuring claims are complete and accurate. It will be an exciting year of innovation and development ahead.
Joseph Zabinski, Managing Director, AI & Personalized Medicine at OM1
I’ve seen 2024 described as the year AI ‘grows up’. We’ll only know in retrospect if this ends up being accurate, but I’m most excited about the trend toward maturing AI applications in healthcare. This means a few things: hype fading to background noise, growing acceptance of AI outputs by patients and providers, well-targeted applications with demonstrated value, and most importantly, the technical infrastructure to ingest data, analyze them quickly, and deliver insights seamlessly to end users. This pipeline is critical to unlocking some of the tremendous value AI can provide, like surfacing ‘hidden’ or ‘lost’ patients for diagnostic evaluation or access to effective treatments.
I do worry that hype, unrealistic expectations, and even concerns about AI will continue to hold back adoption – especially if we expect AI to be perfect, or to solve every problem. The newest tools like large language models can compound these challenges, as they can also generate even more value for patients. The key to meeting these challenges is to ground expectations in real-world problems – focusing, for example, on circumstances where providers could genuinely use added insight to inform decision-making around a particular course of treatment.
Characterizing these needs in language users understand, meeting those needs using AI tools, and doing so in a compliant, minimally disruptive way is the key to building momentum and trust. If we can do that, AI adoption in healthcare will take off, and we’ll see the real-world effects on patient outcomes we know AI can deliver.
Jeff Surges, CEO at RLDatix
Health systems that prioritize connected healthcare operations will always be a step ahead. With shrinking economic margins, rising costs, and an increasingly competitive healthcare landscape, the financial and reputational implications of medical errors can be astronomical. We’ll see forward-thinking health systems breaking their siloed approaches by implementing system-wide technology platforms that collect and view data holistically, providing real-time insights needed to address adverse scenarios as they happen. Proactively updating policies and processes prevents future issues and enables safer care.
Michael Meucci, CEO at Arcadia
One of the most exciting aspects of health IT right now is that the healthcare industry is in the middle of two concurrent transformations: a digital transformation and a financial transformation catalyzed by payment reform and increased labor costs. This once-in-a-generation evolution will change how healthcare looks and operates over the next 6-12 months with changes lasting through the decade—especially considering CMS is committed to having 100 percent of Medicare and the majority of Medicaid on value-based reimbursement by 2030.
In 2024, organizations that have figured out (or continue to figure out) how to harness data effectively will be tomorrow’s leaders. Healthcare data is the fastest growing dataset by volume in the world (growing 36 percent year-over-year) and the added pressures of digital-first companies coming to healthcare, such as Amazon, CVS, and Devoted, are resetting patient expectations. Underpinning all these changes is how healthcare organizations use their data, with data being the unifying force and key to an effective strategic future.
Now more than ever, being a healthcare organization is not enough. To succeed in 2024 and beyond, healthcare organizations must also be technology companies, leading other industries in the use of data and AI. To do this, healthcare organizations will double down on their existing technology, focusing on end-to-end platforms and ecosystems that serve the entire enterprise, as opposed to investing in new point solutions and layering on more and more disparate tools that are narrow in scope and use cases.
Tannus Quatre, PT, MBA, SVP & Chief Business Development Officer, Therapy at Net Health
Digital care delivery methods will continue to grow in popularity due to their convenience and accessibility for different patient populations. In the rehab therapy space, digital musculoskeletal therapy (digital MSK), is an emerging trend shaping the future of a sector that has traditionally relied on in-person care methods. Digital MSK leverages digital health technologies and digital therapeutics for the relief and treatment of musculoskeletal ailments and pain by utilizing smartphones, tablets, and/or computers for treating and managing common conditions affecting the bones, joints, muscles, and connective tissues.
Its main goal is to make musculoskeletal care more accessible, convenient, and cost-effective for the public, lowering the personal barriers of time, distance, availability, and socioeconomic status through technology. Silicon Valley-type startups have been at the forefront of digital MSK developments, but we will continue to see this tool for rehab therapy and care facilitation being adopted as more technology disruptors emerge.
Jonathan Sachs, CEO at WUWTA
There are more ways than ever to create a ‘digital front door’ for patients to access care. Healthcare delivery systems that focus on digital engagement have embraced new technology to make scheduling and receiving care easier than ever. This includes utilizing video technology to put the provider in front of the patient in more ways than simply face-to-face. Communicating a-synchronously with a provider, and having the provider proactively reach out to patients to manage their care, is an important strategy for improving healthcare while reducing costs.
Eric Prugh, Chief Product Officer at Authenticx
AI’s visual capabilities keep growing and adapting over time. We’re enabling more modalities for interacting with AI, and we’ll see further expansion of what we know is possible. We’re getting closer to being able to throw anything at AI and derive value from it, which is a pretty exciting future. Imagine inputting a variety of different data formats like images, spreadsheets, and text — then getting a synthesized set of insights back in a readable, digestible format.
Nancy Nelson, Optimization Manager at Medical Advantage
The most significant trend in the world of health care is the advancement in AI technology. The integration of artificial intelligence into healthcare systems has the potential to transform patient care, including diagnostics and imaging. Algorithms have been developed to analyze images such as x-rays, MRIs, and CT scans, assisting healthcare professionals in diagnosing conditions more accurately and quickly. Other key ways AI has been applied to healthcare include drug discovery and development, remote monitoring, and virtual health assistance. This includes AI-powered chatbots, which are employed to provide information, answer queries, and assist with appointment scheduling.
So many exciting things to think about here! Huge thank you to everyone who took the time out of their day to submit a quote for us and thank you to all of you for taking the time to read this article! We could not do this without your support. What health IT trend has you most excited and why is it exciting? Let us know either in the comments down below or over on social media. We’d love to hear from all of you!
