ISG Provider Lens™ Healthcare Digital Services - Global Summary Report - December 2021
GLOBAL MARKET TRENDS
ISG sees several common trends across regions and industries:
Heightened significance of value-based care
The rapid changes in the nature of healthcare, propelled by the pandemic, highlight the need for healthcare providers to focus more on value-based care. During the pandemic, many payers transformed their associations with providers into more economically balanced, value-based care contracts. For patients, an exposure to telemedicine prompted a shift in the way they chose to interact with their healthcare providers and the way they evaluated the value of in-person visits. Consequently, patients are adapting the way in which they relate with their healthcare providers. Telehealth and in-person care are not the same, but the latter is increasingly being swapped with the former compared with the time before the pandemic.
Increased importance of data security
In the current virtual era, healthcare payers and providers must keep their businesses running, while maintaining secure systems. Given the changing business and healthcare landscapes, healthcare organizations are moving beyond traditional security methods to adopt the latest innovations and security practices. They are seeking a holistic security approach to support their digital transformation strategies and are providing stakeholders with secure mobile access. Also, healthcare service providers, including the ones in this study, are adding new capabilities, including analytics, to their offerings, thus further empowering healthcare payers and providers to react promptly in the evolving threat landscape.
Innovation-focused operational enhancement
Technology evolution has accelerated the digital transformation journeys for many healthcare payer and provider organizations. Payers are adapting new and improvised IT strategies around digital transformation for business growth. Interoperability and transparency are growing in importance to improve the quality of care being provided to patients through the right sharing of health information across all stakeholders, and at the right time. Future investments will reflect digital transformation initiatives, encompassing cloud, automation, data management and analytics, cybersecurity and workflow management.
Interoperability and connected health
The emphasis on interoperability and transparency in the sharing of health records among stakeholders has increased in the recent past. Access to the right information, at right time, helps in delivering optimal care to patients/members. In the near term, focus is on meeting interoperability mandates of governments, while at the same time giving patients easier access to their medical records and allowing timely and efficient sharing of information across the healthcare ecosystem.
“The COVID-19 pandemic continued to strain the global healthcare ecosystem in 2021, but digital services accelerated to reduce in-person exposure risks while improving access to patient data for improving health outcomes. Ron Exler - director and principal analyst, U.S.
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