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3 Digital Healthcare Trends Helping Companies Control Their Costs Of 2025 and Beyond

by iSphere on October 9, 2024 in Blog, Business Advice, Healthcare IT Solutions

Is your healthcare organization truly delivering smart, personalized healthcare or are you merely digitized and connected?

That’s the question Pamela Spence, the Global Health Sciences and Wellness Leader for EY, encouraged members of the industry to think about during her Wired panel.

In truth, there is a big difference between adopting digital solutions and reaching a level of maturity where technology can elevate care outcomes, maximize resource allocation, and safeguard sensitive data.

Spence emphasized that many healthcare companies are struggling to achieve digital maturity because they feel there are competing investment priorities and a lack of essential funds. Other voices in the marketplace are reflecting that message. The American Hospital Association pointed out heightened costs for labor, drugs, and supplies causing a financial crunch across hospitals and health systems.

That’s why more than keeping pace with early adopters, healthcare organizations need to focus on boosting the impact of their IT investment dollars. Here’s how you can do that with the digital health trends of 2025 and beyond.

Artificial Intelligence

Though artificial intelligence is often touted for its potential to advance diagnostics and treatments, some of the most cost-effective AI use cases are more mundane. Transcribing patient encounters with AI scribe technology can make a significant dent in the time spent on clinical notetaking. Using machine learning and natural language processing, these programs convert audio to text (it doesn’t record them) to keep clinicians engaged in patient interactions.

Kaiser Permanente is already investing in this technology and has shown their rollout of AI scribe technology reduced documentation burden. In early trials, they’re seeing clinicians save an average of one hour per day at the keyboard.

There has also been clear success with medical imaging. Deep learning capabilities can mitigate quality issues in MRIs caused by patient movement or excessive noise, which can enhance report accuracy and better diagnostics. That way, clinicians can detect abnormalities or malformations faster to improve care outcomes.

The caveat is that these AI solutions need to be implemented with caution and foresight. Daniel Yang, MD, VP of AI and Emerging Technologies at Kaiser Permanente, said this:

“I don’t think that the enthusiasm around developing tools has been met with the same level of enthusiasm around testing, validating and demonstrating the safety and effectiveness of these tools. There’s a tremendous amount of effort in the development space, and I feel like the infrastructure to support responsible AI has not yet been able to catch up.”

Leaders in the industry need to prioritize quality assurance as much as innovation. Clinicians need to verify the accuracy of AI transcriptions, so diagnoses and treatment plans reflect actual conversations. Radiologists need to apply skepticism to AI imaging until a recommendation is proven correct, holding algorithms to the same standard of scrutiny that they would a human. Plus, data stewards need to apply data governance strategies to organize and protect PII and PHI.

Cybersecurity

When it comes to controlling costs, healthcare organizations need to prioritize cybersecurity more than ever before. The average global cost of a data breach reached $4.88 million in 2024, an amount which can weaken the profitability of (if not bankrupt) even the most fruitful providers or payors.

Plus, the Department of Health and Human Services recorded nearly 400 breaches via their portal by the halfway point of this year. If the damages continue to escalate, multiple or even one breach can put healthcare organizations out of business.

The mounting cybersecurity issues in healthcare mean healthcare cybersecurity leaders need to recalibrate their strategies in 2025 and beyond.

A study conducted by Kroll found that healthcare industry organizations were more likely to self-diagnose their detection and response as more mature than reality. Over half of healthcare respondents didn’t have these capabilities in place:

Threat Hunting
Remote Eradication and Remediation
Incident Response Plans
Investigation and Validation Strategies
Business Continuity Plans
Crisis Management Strategies
Recovery Capabilities

In fact, the perceived maturity of healthcare leaders made these strategies feel less urgent than they are. A good way to combat those blind spots is to engage in information sharing with cybersecurity peers, discussing how they are shoring up defenses and mitigating risks. Transparent communication within the community can help to recognize gaps faster and keep the price tag (and success) of data breaches much lower.

Data Rules and Standards

Leaders in the healthcare industry are no strangers to the need for data interoperability, exchange, and security. The dynamic nature of the industry has created an ever-expanding web of data rules and standards that organizations need to stay profitable, productive, and secure as well as maintain regulatory compliance.

The rules not only apply to the data itself, but the technology procured. In August, HHS issued a new rule meant to align health IT requirements align with HHS-adopted data standards. According to experts in the industry, this new standard can help organizations to elevate care outcomes, further eliminate data silos, reduce inefficiencies, and harness AI and machine learning applications.

Before organizations can unlock this next generation of platforms and strategies, they need to audit their current programs and systems to determine if they can achieve the necessary level of interoperability as well as if they adhere to competitive data governance practices. In some cases, that interoperability might require reevaluating vendors that are not able to keep up with evolving industry standards and rules, identifying alternatives that maintain competitive compliance.

Unlocking Digital Health Trends

The ability of your organization to stay current with these and other digital healthcare trends will depend largely upon the talent you have on your team. From data scientists, AI engineers, and cybersecurity analysts to healthcare executives, the right roster of professionals can determine whether business goals and compliance standards become a reality.

Working with the right healthcare IT staffing firm can help to overcome those challenges. With an understanding of the industry landscape and access to an extensive talent pool, the right staffing partner can be the difference between smart and personalized care and just checking the boxes.