5 Trends That Will Drive Health Care IT In 2014

In 2014, analytics will play a bigger role in health care, while electronic health records (EHRs) will take a backseat to other types of technology such as mobility, Big Data and cloud computing, research firm IDC predicts.

Scott Lundstrom, group vice president for IDC Health Insights, shared some of the firm’s predictions for the health care industry in 2014.

1) Health care will increasingly adopt analytics. Among the top trends in 2014 will be analytics as health care organizations use data to spot chronic conditions and population health patterns. “The biggest area of investment is analytics,” Lundstrom told CruxialCIO. “It doesn’t matter if you’re talking to a provider or payer.”

Health care insurance companies such as Aetna and UnitedHealth are particularly focusing on analytics. Aetna is growing its Healthagen division and UnitedHealth owns Optum, which offers an analytics platform called Humedica to help doctors track health data and monitor chronic conditions. Under the ACA, doctors form accountable care organizations and receive incentives for positive health outcomes.