10 Tech Trends in
Healthcare
@ValaAfshar
@bobzemke, @carey_mercier

Smart
PHONES

The iPhone has been a catalyst
and the lead smartphone
adopted in healthcare.
W

It was a wakeup call that
small form factor devices
could become so widely
adopted in clinical care.
Wi-Fi

Application development leverages
smartphone hardware – cameras,
accelerometers, and Bluetooth.
Wi-Fi

There are high
expectations for the
enterprise environment
to be available on a
mobile platform.
Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi
ADOPTION

For many hospitals the WLAN now has more
connected devices than the wired LAN.

It started with workstations on wheels – but
now encompasses guest Internet access, medical
devices, phones, video units, RTLS, and on and on.

Since Wi-Fi availability is
expected, medical devices are
getting smarter where Wi-Fi
connectivity is a requirement.

Bring Your Own
DEVICE

Smartphones + Hospital Wi-Fi = need for a BYOD
policy and mobile device management solution.
+ =

BYOD has been the
disrupter to how technology
solutions are evaluated and
roll out by hospital IT.

A revolution took place
and it is forcing IT to
focus more on customer
service delivery rather
than technology control.

We are moving towards
a cloud infrastructure
supporting a range of devices
dictated by the consumer.

Government
Mandates

HITECH, HIPAA, Meaningful Use, and ICD 10 have
forced healthcare institutions to invest heavily in
IT infrastructure, talent, and application systems.

These mandates
have the potential
for being the catalyst
to big data analysis.

Voice over
Ip

The emergence of VoIP has allowed
healthcare institutions to leverage
the same IT infrastructure
backbone to support data,
and voice traffic.

More importantly it has created communication
flexibility that started with mobility and is now
evolving into applications.

Social Media
Platforms

Emergence of social media is allowing hospitals to
reach out to staff, patients, and the general public
in new ways, and to reach younger audiences.

Next we will see social
evolve into flexible
communications options for
hospitals and care teams.

Virtualization

Virtualization is increasing
the consolidation of services
onto dedicated server
farms and a high level of
availability, and redundancy.

IAAS and PAAS are
emerging and soon we may
even see virtual cloud and
virtual storage on the rise.

IP–Based Medical
Devices

Medical devices are evolving
at an unprecedented rate, so
much so that the 510K process
is in dire need of an update in
order to ensure that medical
devices can use the latest in
technological advancements.

As these devices become
more integrated into the
network, human error is
becoming increasingly
contained which ultimately
decreases re-admission rates.

The network infrastructure
and backbone must be agile
enough to accommodate
the explosive growth of
connected devices and
network traffic as we move
towards an era where every
device is communicating
on the network.

mHealth

mHealth facilitates a spectrum of ways to leverage
mobility, and mobile devices to improve clinical
work flows and outcomes.

These range from video remote interpretation,
to telemedicine and remote care use cases.

The next step will be adoption
of wearable technologies.

Big
Data

The infrastructure and applications everyone
investing in holds the promise of being leveraged
for big data analysis, trending, more insight for
improved clinical results.

Our challenge is how to
share the information while
protecting patient privacy.