The healthcare industry has witnessed tremendous changes and growth in the recent past. With the implementation of healthcare reforms, the dynamics of the industry have changed drastically, increasing the need for customized automated solutions for healthcare organizations in bloom44.
Let’s talk about insurance companies, hospitals, insurance agents, and government agencies: All need to increase their effectiveness through various types of software solutions to meet the demands of information dissemination, compliance, and timeliness for consumers.
Healthcare Industry
The healthcare industry, consisting of medicine, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, and related fields, requires automated healthcare software. According to the standard classification of the global healthcare industry, healthcare has been divided into the following areas: Biotechnology, Diagnostic Substances, Drug Delivery, Drug Manufacturers, Hospitals, Medical Devices and Instruments, Diagnostic Laboratories, Nursing Homes, and Healthcare Plan Providers.
Health IT will see a major boost with the implementation of healthcare reforms. So far, the healthcare industry has not invested too much in the IT sector. However, as the demands require more focus and attention, health IT will receive more funding.
Healthcare IT Departments
It goes without saying that healthcare IT departments suffer from poor infrastructure. The need for custom automated software is there, but the investment must be made. Undoubtedly, investments will be made if they offer some prospect of return. However, as healthcare companies and facilities need to comply with new healthcare standards, they will cut costs in other areas and seek to invest in this area.
If you’re interested in a statistic, let’s look at a report from Commonwealthfund. It says that by 2020, the adoption of electronic health records could generate $142 billion in efficiency and safety savings in U.S. physician practices and $371 billion in U.S. hospitals. However, there are also associated costs of about $156 billion over five years and an additional $48 billion in operating costs. But it’s something that can be pursued given the improvements it offers the industry.
When we talk about health IT, this could include electronic medical records (EMR), electronic health records (EHR), personal health records (PHR), fee-for-service health records (PBHR), and electronic prescribing (e-prescribing). All of these systems must be developed in a robust manner to ensure that the mandates of healthcare reform are fully met.
Some features of HIT include:
- Electronic health records (EHRs).
- Electronic medical records (EMRs)
- Personal health records (PHRs).
- Payable health records (PBHRs).
- Electronic prescribing (e-prescribing).
- Financial/billing/administrative systems.
- Computerized Practitioner Order Entry (CPOE) systems.
Aside from these, outsourcing healthcare software could mean: Cardiology software, clinical software, dental practice software, electronic medical records software, EMS software, healthcare software, health insurance software, healthcare case management, healthcare contract management, medical appointment software, medical billing software, medical device software, and medical staff software, etc.
Healthcare reforms require not only healthcare companies to meet certain standards, but also insurance companies to provide financial stability and security to consumers.
The healthcare reforms require each state to build a health insurance exchange, which is a major challenge given its novelty and desired functionality. States are relying on large or innovative healthcare software companies to provide solutions, set up systems to keep these exchanges running and running smoothly, and also provide customer service to consumers using these exchanges.
All of this means that there is a really big business opportunity for software companies, where healthcare companies, health insurers and government agencies are their customers. In technical terms, this opportunity would be called a B2B market.
