PwC’s Health Research Institute (HRI) today recently released a new report, Healthcare delivery of the future: How digital technology can bridge the gap of time and distance between clinicians and consumers. The report reveals a shift in attitudes among clinicians, suggesting an increased openness toward using digital technology, and offers detailed recommendations for how healthcare companies, clinicians, and new entrants can harness developing technologies to benefit patients and the industry.
As part of its research, HRI surveyed 1,000 industry leaders, physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants, including members of the board of the eHealth Initiative
For the report, healthcare executives were interviewed to gather perceptions about the use of digital technologies in care delivery. So how will healthcare executives envision care delivery in five years? Here are nine perspectives:
Steve J. Stack, President-Elect of the American Medical Association
“We’ll still have compassion healers, but as executives more often establish the construct, this changes the nature of care.”
John Glaser, CEO of Siemens Healthcare
“One of the most prominent technologies over the next five years will be using data analytics software to manage large volumes of data to start predict patterns.”
Steve J. Stack, President-Elect of the American Medical Association
“We’ll still have compassion healers, but as executives more often establish the construct, this changes the nature of care.”
Sam Ho, CMO at United Healthcare
“There will be more use of care extenders to deal with patients. This includes nurse practioners, physician assistants, case managers, pharmacists, and non-licensed community health members.”
Cris Ross at Mayo Clinic
“In five years, we’ll have better population health tools that support anticipatory care.”
Joseph Touey at GlaxoSmithKline
“By 2020, we will have a healthcare delivery system that is fully digitized. There will be emergence of real-time analytics. Everybody wins from a patient care perspective with improved information sharing and interoperability.”
Paul Eddy at Walgreens Co.
“Patients will expect to see their data and this will drive more standards, which will in turn drive physicians to trust each other.”
Marc Probst, CIO at Intermountain Health
“The big challenges for us in five years is going to the level of acute services we can deliver in the home. This will mean fewer handoffs to home health and extending our acute care abilities.”
Michael McGarry at Ascension Health
“One thing we’re focused on is how to leverage technology to take us back to a time when there was a stronger (or maybe closer) physician and patient relationship, but with all the benefits of the modern world.”
Jennifer Covich Bordenick, CEO, eHealth Initiative
“We should see a dramatic improvement in the user’s experience—patients expect healthcare to deliver the same type of interactions they have with retail–easy, routine, and personalized, they won’t settle for anything less.”
How do you envison care delivery in the next five years? Let us know.
photo credit: Lotus Carroll via cc
