Healthcare and Technology: 7 Predictions for 2012

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 14, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- This past year was full of surprises, from the health information technology hiring boom to the popularity of tablets in medical practices across the country. Practice Fusion, the fastest growing Electronic Health Record (EHR) community in the United States with over 130,000 users reaching over 27 million patients, asked key experts in healthcare and technology to share their predictions for 2012.

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The next twelve months are shaping up to be a ground-breaking year for the healthcare sector. Expert predictions for next year highlight the convergence of healthcare and mobile; clinical data being used to find the best treatment option; and continued adoption of EHRs as deadlines for Meaningful Use arrive.

Predictions for 2012 in the Health Information Technology Sector:

• Regina Holliday, Patient Rights Arts Advocate: "In 2012, I predict health IT awareness filtering down to our youngest patients.  More apps will be designed in the world of mobile health that cater to the needs of children.  In brick and mortar stores, we will see doctor play-sets combine the classic treatment tools with the tools of technology."
• Shadee Giurgius, Medical Student and Office Manager at Moataz K. Giurgius MD, Inc., Adult & Geriatric Psychiatry Corporation: "Our practice would still be debating the jump to EHR in 2012 if we hadn't found a free option with Practice Fusion. Finding a free solution is the reason that our 3,120 patients enjoy our new efficiencies and less-prone-to-error workflow. As the office manager, I expect to see our processes speed up which will allow us to provide faster and better medical care for our patients."
• Wade Roush, Chief Correspondent and San Francisco Editor at Xconomy: "2012 could see three tipping points: in the spread of EMRs to physician practices as doctors realize the clock is running out on Meaningful Use payments, in employer-provided wellness programs for employees, and in the amount of data flowing into cloud-based services from personal health monitoring devices. We won't solve any of the massive structural problems in healthcare -- it's an election year, after all -- but we'll all get savvier about the potential solutions."
• John Lynn, Blogger at Health IT Blog Network: "Next year will be all about Meaningful Use: Meaningful Use, ACOs, Meaningful Use, ICD-10, Meaningful Use, Meaningful Use, 5010, and a little more Meaningful Use covered in Meaningful Use."
• Matthew Douglass, Vice President of Engineering at Practice Fusion: "All signs point to 2012 as the year healthcare and mobile truly converge. The creation of physician tools to manage their patient populations, apps for healthcare consumers to access their health history on-the-go, and thousands of apps in the Quantified Self space will allow patients to have access to more and more of their daily data than ever before. Along with this growth in the mobile healthcare market could be additional compliance requirements put in place by the FDA and other regulatory bodies with an eye toward protecting patients."
• Michael Lake, Healthcare Technology Strategies and President of Circle Square Inc.: "Big data, clinical analytics and personalized health will be huge in 2012.  As more clinical data come online from maturing EMR databases, clinical claims repositories and potentially genomics, the need for analysis is now upon us.  We need to use historical and current data to predict clinical and financial risk and find best treatment options.  Important innovations to watch in 2012 include clinical language understanding (Nuance), probabilistic decision-support (IBM Watson), and new approaches to clinical trials that use smaller populations that may directly benefit (translational medicine)."
• Robert Rowley, MD, Medical Director at Practice Fusion: "In health IT, interoperability (having different practice locations be able to share data back and forth) will be the center of attention. Traditional health information exchanges (HIE) will struggle, both technologically and from lack of small practice subscribers. Sharing the platform directly will outstrip other methods as a quick and effective way of sharing information between different locations of care."

About Practice Fusion:
Practice Fusion provides a free, web-based Electronic Health Record (EHR) system to physicians. With charting, scheduling, e-prescribing (eRx), lab integrations, referral letters, Meaningful Use certification, unlimited support and a Personal Health Record for patients, Practice Fusion's EHR addresses the complex needs of today's healthcare providers and disrupts the health IT status quo. Practice Fusion is the fastest growing EHR community in the country with more than 130,000 users serving 27 million patients. The company closed a $23 million Series B round of financing led by Founders Fund in April 2011. For more information about Practice Fusion, please visit practicefusion.com.

Contacts:
Stephanie Schlegal
415-992-7615
[email protected]

Available Topic Expert(s): For information on the listed expert(s), click appropriate link.
Robert Rowley, MD
https://profnet.prnewswire.com/Subscriber/ExpertProfile.aspx?ei=93796
Matt Douglass
https://profnet.prnewswire.com/Subscriber/ExpertProfile.aspx?ei=93797

SOURCE Practice Fusion