7 digital health innovations and investments for 2015

The folks from HP Matter digital magazine wanted to know where I thought digital health startups, product innovators, and venture capital investors should be pointing their attention in 2015. These are some of my technology and healthcare predictions:

1. CMS’s request for information (RFI) on new primary care models bears innovative fruit.
2. Interoperability will move beyond talk and into sustainable business models and real technology. The healthcare ecosystem should be able to create lasting patient benefits.
3. Risk management, compliance, and cybersecurity technologies will become important as we migrate from paper native to digital native data.
4. EHR innovation starts to move beyond Meaningful Use (MU) by embracing the idea that MU is a floor for minimal functionality, not a ceiling for maximum value. Some of these innovations will be tied to CMS’s need for newer care models:
   • Mobile functionality in EHRs to help change the doctor/patient relationship to one that is more than transactional in nature
   • Tech for increased comprehensiveness of, and patient continuity with, primary care
   • Tech to support small PCP practices in transforming to advanced primary care
   • Advanced primary care within accountable care organizations, along with multi-payer participation and performance measurement that is meaningful to beneficiaries and clinicians
   • Analytics and solutions to track performance measurement that is meaningful to beneficiaries and clinicians,
5. Digital health investors start to realize how hard it is for health IT companies to make money without interoperability and integration. Innovators begin moving away from small simple mobile apps, standalone solutions, and non-workflow based systems into larger services-focused enterprise tech. The new tech will understand that minimizing disruptions across workflow steps in the continuum of care is a key goal.
6. ACOs and value based healthcare starts to affect the marketplace because solutions providers finally focus on beneficiary management and attributed populations instead of general population health.
7. Data in healthcare (especially genomics and bioinformatics) has always been big. But, new “Big Data” tools start to offer instant analytics and predictive models that affect real patient care instead of being focused on research alone.

The January HP Matter issue has some pretty useful information. You can Register for HP Matter for a chance to win an HP SlateBook x2, an Ultrabook™ and a tablet in one. Weekly drawings will be conducted throughout January and February.

This post brought to you by HP Matter. The content and opinions expressed below are that of The Healthcare IT Guy.