Health Industry Insights (HII), an IDC Company, recently published a report called “Technology Selection: The Evolving Care Management Model to Address the Healthcare Crisis.” In essence the report looks at how care management technologies must evolve to accommodate the changing market, namely, “the mounting disease burden” brought on by the increase of chronic conditions in our aging population. Among its many worthwhile findings, the report suggests that integrated technologies such as payer-based electronic health records and those that provide a single source of comprehensive patient information are those that will enable health care payers to best meet the demands of their employer customers while also helping payers themselves maintain costs and improve care. I felt the following quote from the study summed things up rather nicely: “The increasing prevalence of chronic conditions and an aging population is driving a more holistic approach that contemplates the whole person and not one specific disease state or acute episode…”

The HII report resonated deeply with us here at MEDecision because it validated a philosophy we have held for some time. We have long promoted the notion that the next logical step for health information technology is to create a complete and comprehensive view of the individual patient that each stakeholder can both access and contribute to in real-time. It must provide actionable data with up-to-date clinical decision support and gaps in care information to furnish users with a streamlined and simplified resource for managing both populations and individual patients. And it must interface easily with existing systems so the best possible clinical information can get into the hands of those who need it, when they need it and in the format that best suits them.

This is precisely what we have designed our Alineo™ and Nexalign™ products to do, so the HII report indeed corroborates our vision for the future of the industry. It’s no wonder that these products gained so much attention and enthusiasm when we showcased them at the recent AHIP Institute and HIMSS conference. Potential partners and potential users alike have begun to see the value in technologies that can integrate, automate and collaborate. With health care reform poised to kick into high gear in the coming months and the patient centered medical home model continuously gaining traction, I think we’ll see what we once considered the future of health IT become reality a lot sooner than we once anticipated.