There are so many exciting new ideas and technologies being implemented in the field of healthcare. For the most part, these changes can be the very necessary answer to a problem we’ve been facing for a long time. But sometimes, these changes can be concerning. While everyone seems to be excited about it, you might be left with questions and concerns about what its impact will be. These worries and concerns can be very isolating when the topic is trending with seemingly everyone else being excited for it. But you are not alone with your doubts – so let’s unburden ourselves and air out these concerns. What health IT trend has you concerned? What can be done about it and what’s the impact if we do nothing?

We asked our incredible Healthcare IT Today Community these questions and the following is what they had to share.

Dr. Sameer Ather, Co-Founder and CEO at XpertDox

A major concern in health IT is cybersecurity. The increase in digital data handling along with AI technologies raises the stakes for data breaches. To mitigate this, continuous investment in cybersecurity measures and adding modern security and compliance protocols is essential. If unaddressed, this could lead to significant data breaches, undermining the integrity of AI systems in healthcare, like those used in modern EHRs and medical coding.

Sarah Carroll, Senior Vice President, Center for Care Transformation at AVIA Health

Medicaid and Medicare have become one of the biggest quiet crises in health systems today. US hospitals regularly lose $100B annually on Medicaid and Medicare patients but continue to chase higher-margin commercial patients to drive toward profitability. In 2024, health systems need a more balanced approach to these critical populations, one that taps into emerging digital capabilities to affordably and effectively deliver care. I’m watching digitally enabled primary care providers like Cityblock and Waymark, along with value-based analytics platforms like Guidehealth and Syntax Health, and expect to see exciting new partnerships emerge to revolutionize this critical but often-overlooked space.

Patrick Tarnowski, Chief Commercial Officer at OneStep

The health IT landscape is highly competitive and noisy, creating obstacles for startups to gain a foothold. Although many startups succeed, the unfortunate reality is that even some of the best innovations fail to gain traction and are short-lived. This puts stakeholders/provider partners in the difficult position of disruption and sunk cost and time if a new technology company fails. The uncertainty of health tech startups’ longevity may lead some buyers to exercise greater caution in their partnerships with health tech in general. This is concerning because it could extend a chilling impact across the industry, potentially slowing down investment and future innovations.

The emergence of health tech without a comprehensive understanding of the healthcare delivery ecosystem is also a concern. For solutions to be effective, they must align with providers’ needs and seamlessly integrate into their existing healthcare workflows to enhance patient outcomes. If a solution falls short of meeting these criteria, it fails to fulfill its intended purpose.

Caryn Hewitt, RN, BSN, CENP, CPHQ, Senior Director of Consulting Services at CenTrak

Enhanced automation will eliminate the need for complex, time-consuming, and manual downtime procedures. With the fast-paced evolution of AI, IoT, real-time technologies, and the growing use of each in the healthcare industry, having backup/disaster recovery (DR) and high availability (HA) solutions in place in the new year will help ensure customers’ continued access to system functionality and operations.

For example, the use of a Real-Time Location System (RTLS) enables many critical workflows like infant protection, automatic staff presence detection for nurse call cancellation, temperature monitoring, and staff duress notifications. However, as technology is increasingly incorporated into every aspect of business operations, downtime threats can grow exponentially.

The dependence on technology needs to align with more complete, full-service disaster recovery and business continuity planning in 2024 to significantly reduce or eliminate system downtime and data loss. For example, when implementing an RTLS system, choosing a comprehensive provider that works with you to personalize high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) solutions will proactively ensure the continuation of location services and environmental monitoring systems.

Tazmin Leipsig, Director of Product – Digital Health at Calian IT & Cyber Solutions

The benefits of large data sets, machine learning, and AI are instrumental, but I am concerned about the management of this data and where it could go. Both from a cyber security and privacy point of view. “Who owns the data?” is becoming a common question. I hope to see more shifts into synthesized data sets to offset some of the privacy concerns. With the increasing digitization of healthcare data, there is a growing emphasis for cybersecurity to protect patient information. Healthcare organizations are trying their best to keep up but need to quickly work with cybersecurity groups to keep their data safe.

Ronen Lavi, Co-Founder and CEO at Navina

While AI-powered healthcare solutions are indeed trending, and it’s difficult to argue with AI’s potential to transform healthcare, its long-term success is dependent on its adoption by hundreds of thousands of very busy doctors. Getting AI tools into the hands of those who need them most – physicians at the point of care – is an uphill battle. Adapting to paradigm shifts is never easy, and overburdened physicians have every reason to be resistant to new solutions. Generic ‘black box’ solutions that lack evidence-backed explainability particularly risk alienating clinical teams and turning them off AI altogether.

Given the adoption challenge, even the most forward-thinking organizations might be tempted to focus on AI-powered analytics and other back-office solutions, leaving much of AI’s potential untapped: fragmented patient data will continue to overwhelm providers, creating chaos instead of being used to improve care and health outcomes. Responsible, evidence-backed AI solutions designed with physicians’ needs in mind will go a long way toward mitigating this challenge.

Tim Bowe, CEO at Full Spectrum

Within the healthcare and medical device industries (as well as virtually every other one), focus on incorporating AI into product suites has been a major focus. While it is true that incorporating some AI elements within many products can drive business value, as with past rapid-adoption trends, much of the investment will fail to deliver the desired results – better, more profitable products.

Investment in AI to increase understanding of what it can and cannot do is a worthy exercise and will, ultimately, be required for essentially all products. However, in the short term, by which we mean the next year or so, we feel that investing in integrating a more solid cyber-secure infrastructure, that can evolve as the threats evolve, will deliver a more definitive ROI – and possibly protect against an attack that financially destabilizes the company.

Ross Harper, PhD, Co-Founder and CEO at Limbic

The misclassification and bundling of wellness solutions with healthcare-facing solutions. Healthcare is a regulated industry with strict requirements for compliance and clinical evidence. Allowing ourselves to be tricked into an over-reliance on scores of more rudimentary wellness tools in serious healthcare settings is deeply concerning. I think healthcare deserves its own tooling. Misrepresenting their capability, especially as advanced AI, not only sets unrealistic expectations but also risks undermining the true potential of AI in healthcare. While apps have their place in consumer markets and are a step forward toward preventive medicine, mistaking them for comprehensive healthcare solutions is not just optimistic – it’s a dangerous oversight that could stall the much-needed evolution of technology in this critical field.

I see three actions that can be taken: 1. Properly educating the market so that healthcare stakeholders can be more discerning about the 2. Genuine AI healthcare experts need to be more vocal and emphatic about the benefits while being understanding of outsiders’ concerns. 3. Policy updates to prevent misleading branding in wellness products’ marketing. Most “mental health” apps are actually “mental wellness” apps. That is a big distinction that cannot be ignored.

Rajeev Ronanki, CEO at Lyric

As we head into 2024, I am optimistic about the profound positive changes on the horizon for the business of healthcare. As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integral to healthcare, the urgency to integrate ethical governance cannot be overstated. Companies must remember that it is human-to-human interactions, in-person and digitally, that drive the very essence of healthcare, and AI in healthcare must prioritize these interactions, necessitating a foundation of responsibility and ethics in AI’s creation, testing, deployment, and monitoring.

Dave Bennett, Executive Vice President of Healthcare at pCare by Uniguest

We must learn how we can best leverage AI to support healthcare professionals and benefit patient outcomes while keeping the human touch. Healthcare is a people business, and digital transformation and AI are about pairing the human component of healthcare with groundbreaking technology to provide value at each step and benefit the human experience. When implementing emerging technologies such as AI and IoT devices, we need to find the right mix between speed of adoption and comprehension of the overall impact. We must ensure we’re fully optimizing technology to guarantee the best outcomes, safest environments, and strong ROI. That’s a priority to me.

Brent Dover, CEO at Carta Healthcare

Unlike in other fields where AI can train itself, healthcare AI requires a guided process with humans actively involved in training the technology. There is also no quick fix to the problem of healthcare data intricacy. However, one proven method of gaining health leaders’ trust in AI is to have certified healthcare data experts take on the dual process of performing their tasks while AI training. As the trainers familiarize themselves with the technology, the latter also grows its capability of performing tasks accurately. Although the full training process can take up to several years to complete, this human-centric approach both improves AI in healthcare’s accuracy and impact, as well as provides a solution to other prevalent issues such as cost and the nursing shortage.

Christopher Rogers, Chief Operating Officer at Carenet Health

The clinical potential of AI in diagnostics is undeniably exciting, promising to elevate primary care practitioners’ capabilities with improved accuracy and predictive measurements. However, ethical considerations, particularly regarding bias and accountability, must be paramount in its implementation. Establishing robust guidelines, regular audits, and reporting mechanisms is imperative to ensure the ethical and responsible use of these tools, contributing positively to healthcare outcomes without compromise.

Tim Vaughan, Vice President of Product – Healthcare at pCare by Uniguest

At times, technology can get in its own way. There’s so much we can do technology-wise, but it has to be balanced against what the patient really needs. Productive digital interactions supplied by an interactive patient care system, such as healthcare alerts, reminders, and communications, can provide real-time updates and check-ins for patients to remain engaged with their care as they engage in positive distraction activities such as watching television or playing games.

A lot of great insights here! Thank you to everyone who took the time out of their day to submit a quote for us and thank you to all of you for taking the time to read this article! We could not do this without your support. What health IT trend has you concerned? What can be done about it and what’s the impact if we do nothing? Let us know either in the comments down below or over on social media. We’d love to hear from all of you!