As we kick off 2024, we wanted to start the new year with a series of 2024 Health IT predictions.  We asked the Healthcare IT Today community to submit their predictions and we received a wide ranging set of responses that we grouped into a number of themes.  In fact, we got so many that we had to narrow them down to just the best and most interesting.  Check out our community’s predictions below and be sure to add your own thoughts and/or places you disagree with these predictions in the comments and on social media.

All of this year’s 2024 health IT predictions (updated as they’re shared):

• John and Colin’s 2024 Healthcare IT Predictions
• Health Equity Predictions
• Healthcare Cybersecurity Predictions
• Telehealth and VR Predictions
• Value Based Care Predictions
• Pharma IT and AI Predictions
• Healthcare Interoperability, Data, and Cloud Predictions
• Healthcare Workforce Predictions
• Healthcare Generative AI and Data Predictions
• Healthcare AI Regulations and Ethics Predictions
• Cautionary Views of AI
• Patient Preditions
• Uses of AI in Healthcare Predictions
• General Health IT Predictions
• Health IT Predictions (on video)
• Healthcare AI Predictions

And now, check out our community’s Healthcare AI predictions.

Patches Seely, Executive Vice President of Clinical Solutions at Carenet Health
Clinicians’ burnout is in both a state of prevention and cure. For the clinicians already experiencing symptoms of burnout, there is great promise for tools that support health and wellness through technology. Additionally, I predict we will continue to see employers investing in associate engagement so they, healthcare workers, are enabled to provide a high quality, empathic connection with patients. Subsequently, the healthcare industry will continue to seek to find ways to harness AI and emerging technologies in 2024, with a focus on enhancing clinical processes, decision support, and workforce management.

In the spirit of prevention of burn out, where technology can automate administrative burden, make chart reviews more efficient, use ambient listening capabilities to reduce time spent in the EHR will have a positive impact on the clinical burnout epidemic. The evolution of AI from narrow applications to broader, more advanced uses will be a key trend, as well as the increasing acceptance of AI as a vital tool in clinical settings. Neither of those concepts are new in 2024, but I predict more focus in those areas. It’s crucial for healthcare organizations to stay at the forefront of these technological advancements to provide the best care for patients and consumers.

Lee Teslik, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Reverence
AI and machine learning will show real impact, but “off-the-shelf” technology will become a thing of the past. With wildly exciting new technological opportunities, the devil will be in the details of usage. Ensuring “good” usage will require everyone involved to roll up their sleeves and get into operational details that have commonly interfered with tech adoption in the past. This means ensuring better alignment on objectives (cost vs growth vs clinical vs satisfaction), it means operational work to evolve human processes and workflows, it means systems work to break down data silos and connect different data sets in real-time, and it means culture changes among administrators and practitioners.

Leslie Pagel, Chief Evangelist at Authenticx
AI tools, such as ChatGPT and generative AI, are contributing to speed, volume, and accuracy in processing unstructured data sources. The organizations investing in these resources will be rewarded with a competitive advantage as they will be able to respond at the speed of change – meeting customer needs in the moment. The ability to quickly process a high volume of conversational data – representing the authentic voice of the customer – allows teams to have a clear line of sight into the changing customer landscape, and gives business leaders the confidence they need to strategically pivot to meet customer and business expectations.

Joseph Zabinski, Ph.D., Managing Director, AI & Personalized Medicine at OM1
Successful AI in 2024 fueled by interest, maturity, and willingness: There is more momentum in artificial intelligence (AI) than the industry has seen in a while. Similarly, unlike previous upsurges, this momentum feels more mature – less about experimentation and ‘shiny objects’, more about real-world applications at scale.

In 2024, the industry will see well-functioning AI up and running in clinical care pathways and large-scale settings, especially where AI is being used to surface ‘hidden’ or lost patients for diagnosis and access to effective treatment. While healthcare leaders have been talking about these applications for a long time, the next year feels like it has the right mix of interest, technical maturity, and willingness to invest for AI to really evolve.

Sandeep Akkaraju, CEO & Co-Founder at Exo
As healthcare costs in the U.S. are expected to reach $6 trillion by 2027, cost containment and the push to increased decentralization of care will be a top healthcare priority in 2024. These higher-than-normal healthcare costs are driven by an aging population who use emergency rooms and urgent care centers as their first-care interactions. Given these facilities heavily favor reactive healthcare needs rather than emphasizing preventative measures, this reliance contributes significantly to the high costs of the U.S. healthcare system. To reduce this burden and create more accessible, affordable care, we will see a push for more patient-care interactions happening in outpatient care facilities–which will need to be equipped with the same technology for imaging and diagnostics that traditional health centers have.

In 2024, hospitals will realize the value of AI and automation in modernizing outdated processes that prohibit access to care–such as medical imaging. AI will be used throughout the entire end-to-end process for ultrasounds–from the moment the image is captured, to when it is analyzed, to how it informs patient care. This application will also remove operator dependence and significantly reduce inefficiencies, thereby improving both the patient and caregiver experiences.

As AI becomes more engrained in the healthcare continuum, hospitals and caregivers will be faced with more challenges around medical legality and liability. With the majority of AI tools lacking the necessary FDA clearance for use in healthcare settings, health systems will need to properly evaluate their AI investments to prioritize legitimized solutions that will ensure patient safety and legal compliance.”

Madan Moudgal, Chief Executive Office at Sagility Technologies at Sagility
In the landscape of generative AI, governance, privacy, and trust surface as pivotal concerns. If healthcare organizations are able to effectively address and balance these apprehensions, AI emerges as an effective tool poised to revolutionize user experiences and reduce persistent cost challenges. As healthcare leaders continuously seek strategies to differentiate their services, we’ll likely see a substantial increase in the integration of generative AI into healthcare administration and service delivery in 2024.

While the transformative potential of generative AI is evident, it is essential to acknowledge its reliance on robust computational power to deliver precise responses. Organizations must remain agile, preparing to embrace and implement the more sophisticated models. Healthcare payers and providers can evolve with AI models that provide clear insights into how decisions are made. This will ensure the deployment of the most accurate and impactful responses in healthcare applications.

Rajesh Viswanathan, Chief Technology Officer at Inovalon
With the emergence of generative AI in 2023, the adoption of these technologies in healthcare is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. A KLAS executive survey reports that the number of healthcare organizations deploying generative AI will at least double in the next year. However, while there’s plenty of hype around generative AI, few companies possess the depth and quality of health data and financial resources to accurately train models with the goal of making healthcare more affordable, equitable, or effective.

Our prediction for 2024 is that the impact of generative AI will greatly increase through cross-industry collaboration between healthcare organizations and tech partners with deep healthcare expertise, to ensure AI/ML models accurately represent patient populations, avoid biases, and adhere to healthcare’s strict data governance requirements to overcome security or privacy concerns.

Cara Brant, CEO at Clinical Trial Media
Organizations will explore the balance between human touch and artificial intelligence as they seek new ways to scale care. As artificial intelligence becomes more integrated in healthcare, its vast potential comes into sharper focus; its shortcomings are becoming more apparent as well. Companies will look to refine their distribution of labor between AI and humans. Health is personal and intimate.

While AI can personalize treatments, patients will always crave care from people they trust; it will be imperative to delicately toe the line between where humans are necessary and where automation can optimize. An area where this needs refinement is trial recruitment and retention. Automation can be effective in identifying qualified trial candidates quickly, reducing costs in one of the most expensive and time consuming parts of development. But making sure potential participants are treated like individuals makes all the difference when it comes to getting and keeping them in a trial.

Matt Cunningham, Executive Vice President of Product, AuthAI at Availity
Over the past three years, we’ve seen a rapid evolution of AI technology–reaching a critical point in which language and image recognition are now generally better than humans. This technological shift comes at a time when the healthcare industry is facing the effects of payer/provider health system consolidation in combination with increased regulatory policies and processes related to data standardization and interoperability.

As we move into 2024, we can expect this confluence of factors to collide–opening the floodgates for the integration of AI into the healthcare ecosystem. The key to effectively facilitating AI’s success in healthcare, an industry that has traditionally lagged far behind others, begins with identifying use cases that can both radically improve the current experience or process while also maintaining consideration for the human-to-human need to deliver and receive effective care. Additionally, it will be important to establish both transparency of the algorithms being used and auditability of the determinations to establish and maintain trust of its use and accelerate adoption.

Clarissa Riggins, Chief Product Officer at Experian Health
AI
With staffing shortages continuing to surge, we will see increased adoption of technology, including artificial intelligence, to overcome the resource gaps in 2024. Healthcare organizations will increasingly need to leverage technology to achieve higher levels of efficiency and accuracy so providers can maximize their staffing resources and reduce costs. This applies to the entire RCM ecosystem including reducing administrative burdens and producing cleaner claims. Experian Health’s State of Patient Access 2023 survey found more than a third of respondents agree that automation is beneficial, suggesting an increase in integrating advanced technologies like AI in the near future.

AI will become more accessible and pervasive in the healthcare industry in the coming year. Organizations will evaluate their largest pain points to see how they can leverage the technology where it’s needed most. A major hurdle in the revenue cycle pertains to claim denials. Experian Health’s AI-driven platform identifies issues, recognizes patterns, and provides predictive information for favorable results. AI Advantage – Predictive Denials proactively identifies claims with a high likelihood of denial, enabling providers to make necessary edits before submission. Additionally, the post-submission tool, AI Advantage – Denial Triage, steps in after claims have been denied identifying those with the greatest potential for reimbursement. With AI, it’s not just about the data; the real game-changer is how we can aggregate and analyze this data to make informed predictions, changing the way we approach patient care and healthcare strategies. In 2024, we will see a continued increase in the overall adoption of new technology and investment in IT, taking us from the crawling stage to walking and catching up to other industries.

RCM
In today’s healthcare landscape, the revival of the holistic, longitudinal health record isn’t merely a momentary glimpse but a comprehensive journey through a patient’s medical history. Organizations are actively exploring the concept of a patient attribute factory, a powerhouse of insights that delves into all aspects of the patient experience, including their financial behaviors and their potential for ongoing engagement. This signifies a transformative phase in healthcare’s ongoing evolution, and I expect to see more efforts behind data collection and analysis.

The friction between healthcare providers and payers remains a significant challenge. Many health systems are grappling to maintain their financial stability, and in this environment, providers are increasingly seeking to offer data-backed insights. They are looking for tools and insights that enable them to proactively manage payer relationships. Smart automation and predictive capabilities play a pivotal role. They reduce the burden of repetitive cycle management tasks, offering a critical advantage. In the evolving healthcare landscape, the ability to efficiently manage the payer-provider relationship and streamline processes will be of paramount importance in 2024 for the financial health of healthcare systems.

Christopher Rogers, Chief Operating Officer at Carenet Health
In 2024 we can anticipate more widespread adoption of large language models, deep learning, and neural networks to advance AI beyond singular objectives. These technologies will not only excel at singular tasks but will also become increasingly versatile and capable of handling a broader range of healthcare applications. They will evolve to offer a deeper understanding of patient data and support complex decision-making. The new evolutions in healthcare, driven by technology and AI, will significantly impact the healthcare experience. Patients can expect better outcomes, streamlined processes, patient-centric care, improved access, data-driven decisions, and enhanced security and privacy. This is why it is crucial for healthcare organizations to stay at the forefront of these technological advancements to provide the best care for patients. The new evolutions in healthcare, prompted by technology and AI, will significantly impact the healthcare experience, and this transformation will revolutionize healthcare, delivering more effective, patient-centered care while ensuring data security and privacy.

Chakri Toleti, Founder and CEO at care.ai

The power of AI will bring joy to care again by creating opportunities for clinicians to do their best work, automating administrative manual tasks. Within 5 years every hospital room will have video cameras and AI-assisted edge computing to support clinicians. Hospitals that adopt these technologies will be the ones to thrive and the ones that don’t will struggle.

Our healthcare system is in a moment of existential crisis – workforce shortages, declining reimbursement, and increasing costs. AI ambient sensors that support clinicians and operations teams with new virtual workflows will reimagine healthcare and allow clinicians to optimize their time. Legacy point solutions will be a thing of the past as we move to platforms that deliver more scalable solutions that allow healthcare providers to perform at the top of their licenses. The future of healthcare is in the midst of an AI and ambient assisted transformation where technology is an integral part of coordinating smart care teams to deliver more timely and efficient patient care with a human touch.

For the first time since the introduction of the EMR, generative AI and ambient sensors hold the true promise of getting the keyboard out of the way and restoring face-to-face patient care. AI will not replace clinicians, but the clinicians who embrace it will do the best work and the hospitals and health systems that invest in this long-term solution will have the advantage.

Dave Bennett, Executive Vice President, Healthcare at pCare by Uniguest
The healthcare industry is often behind the technology advancements occurring in other industries due to its extremely conservative, cautious, and human-focused nature, but AI is a key area where our industry is actively developing and investigating. We must learn how we can best leverage AI to support healthcare professionals and benefit patient outcomes while keeping the human touch. We need to focus on this fine line in 2024 and keep it in mind as a moving target.

One area that AI is transforming in healthcare is within relationships — especially the doctor-patient relationship. The best use of AI is in supporting that relationship, which on the generative AI front we see can be used to improve empathy in physician communications. This can enhance an important connection between patient and provider.

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. From the patient engagement perspective, AI also holds huge promise for improving productivity. The technology has the ability to engage with and shoulder non-clinical workloads for our clinicians, allowing teams to reallocate time to patients.

As patient expectations are ever-changing within healthcare, organizations are looking to shift performance approaches in 2024 to more equitably meet the needs of patients and their families. Healthcare consumers want personalized care that factors in their unique circumstances, addresses their individualistic needs, and incorporates their loved ones. In response, the healthcare industry is moving towards a more patient- and family-centered model of care and thoughtfully leveraging digital advancements to factor patients and loved ones into facility designs and processes. This collaborative approach is the recipe for better healthcare outcomes and reduced avoidable readmissions in 2024.

Yudara Kularathne, MD, FAMS, Co-Founder & CEO at Hehealth.ai
In 2024, we’ll see the intersection of healthcare and AI dramatically evolve. AI’s capacity to autonomously process vast datasets will usher in a new era of innovation, automating routine tasks, cutting costs, and elevating customer experiences. This technological shift not only streamlines operations but also unlocks unprecedented possibilities for novel business concepts. Healthcare leaders must recognize that AI represents a paradigm shift from traditional technologies.

Unlike predecessors that follow instructions, AI functions as a skilled collaborator, consistently handling substantial workloads. Understanding this fundamental difference is crucial for harnessing AI’s power effectively, providing a distinct competitive advantage. The key lies in adopting AI with appropriate human supervision at scale.

Be sure to check out all of Healthcare IT Today’s Healthcare AI content and all of our other 2024 healthcare IT predictions.