The 5-Year Plan: Where Will Healthcare Be in 2017?

...Patients need to trust the system. Because, ultimately, health system change will come from them. "Once we build a system where we empower the patient to take charge of their healthcare, it would be tremendous," says Hamilton. "Once we start focusing on the patient – not the payer, and not all the other stuff, we'll be in the ballgame."

The next few years represent a tipping point. Open-source collaboration, semantic technologies, universal exchange languages will lead to a new era of interoperability, says Hamilton, enabling system-wide advances in how data is put to use. "Once we start talking the same language, we can compare like things and develop quality indicators. If that happens, costs will go down and quality should improve."...