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 Today in Health it, the story is the final chapter of predictions. This is day three of predictions and this is the final day of those. My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week in Health IT a channel dedicated to keeping Health IT staff current and engaged.

Today's sponsor is Health lyrics. Health Lyrics is my company. I do executive coaching for healthcare leaders around technology and technology projects. If you are interested in that, you can check us out@healthlyrics.com. Okay. Onto today's story. Again, today is, it's just a culmination of many predictions and, uh, some of which was good in the back and forth on the LinkedIn profile.

If you're not following me on LinkedIn, you should do that so you can interact on some of these, uh, stories and it's, uh, follow me at Bill j Russell on LinkedIn. and some of the back and forth was, Hey, what about the obvious, uh, uh, predictions? And there are some obvious predictions. I tend to overlook those from time to time.

'cause I assume that everyone sees them. For instance, cloud will grow. Yes, of course. Uh, the, I guess the question is why is it gonna grow and where is it gonna grow? It's gonna grow because of agility. One of the things we learned in the pandemic is you have to be agile as an organization, and this means being able to scale up and scale down very rapidly.

Being able to deliver the services wherever the users happen to need them, uh, or wherever. Partnerships require getting data to, to partnerships that we can explore. Things like, I don't know, vaccines and solutions and, uh, quantity of PPE and moving things around, like ventilators, that kinda stuff. So cloud is essential, and cloud is just an architecture that allows us to move things more efficiently, uh, around a larger ecosystem, not just within the four walls of your health system, but around the entire healthcare ecosystem.

There, I mean, there's less risk and it's faster implementation and the ROIs quicker. Uh, you know, you're gonna see this in financial functions. You'll see it in IT function, security as well. Is one of the areas. And that's, you know, another obvious prediction here is that cybersecurity takes a giant leap forward in healthcare.

Uh, you know, the time is right, the focus is right. The, the CEO recognizes that it is more than just losing some records. It could shut down the entire hospital operation. So I think this is the year that it really moves forward. Another obvious one. Voice technologies are gonna continue growing at a rapid pace within healthcare.

You know, voice is seen as one of those areas where we are going to really ease the burden of the clinician. If we do voice correctly, we're gonna ease that burden. Uh, we're gonna give the patients more ways to interact and we're gonna capture more information. We're gonna be able to structure that information.

So voice. Continues to make inroads in, in all areas in the clinician side and the, uh, patient side as well. Uh, you'll even see it go down to the device level, I believe. So we'll see how that progresses. And yes, telehealth is gonna be the most important project for every health system. I think that's just obvious.

I mean, telehealth made a huge leap last year. Telehealth is gonna be center stage probably for the next two years until we get it integrated well until we decide where it's best used, where it delivers the best outcomes, where it delivers the best efficiencies and increases access the MO most effectively.

And then what you're gonna see is an adoption of hybrid models. Right. Either specified days or some sort of scheduling mechanism, which brings people back into the office, but not full-time. And it's not gonna be required to be full-time. There's gonna be, uh, designated from home work days. Uh, we've gotten used to this, this, uh, you know, video meeting, the teams, the zoom, the WebEx, we've gotten used to this and, uh, I think we've

Proven that we can be productive. I think we're also going to see a little bit of a backlash after you go through this for the first couple of months. It's kind of neat and when you get up to the, uh, you know, year to two year mark, I think some people, uh, of certain personalities are gonna be looking forward to getting back into the office.

Obviously there's benefits here. You can hire people more creatively. Uh, you can offer jobs to, you know, better staff who may not be willing to live in major metro areas. Obviously this is huge. If, if you lived and worked in la, New York, Chicago, uh, this gives you a lot of flexibility with staff. You can hire people who have, uh, some other commitments to say raising a family or educating their kids or those kind of things.

So I, you know. It's huge, uh, obvious prediction. I'm still a huge fan of hybrid work environments, so those are my obvious ones, right? Cloud's gonna grow. ai, artificial intelligence and machine learning are gonna grow. Cybersecurity's gonna take center stage and uh, make giant leap this year. Uh, voice technologies are going to grow to rapid pace and telehealth is top of mind.

It has almost been a full year in an all out sprint to understand this virus, address the surge, uh, restore elective procedures, and, and now get the community vaccinated. This goes beyond clinicians, although that is the area of greatest concern. You know, the IT staff, the administration staff has been moving

At breakneck pace during the pandemic, health systems are gonna face a fallout if they don't put the right measures in place to address staff wellness. This includes mental wellness, uh, inclusion in the development of return to work plans. You know, when someone has a voice and, and their voice is heard and they're a part of developing the future, it is really empowering and finding a, uh, creative work environment in in which we can give people a break.

Right. People need rest. We need a break. There will be fallout at some level. My hope is that most health systems are gonna take the time to examine the, uh, community closest to them first while they're caring for the community around them. You know, I usually end these episodes with a, so what? My so what on predictions is, uh, predictions form a point of view and.

This is where I think every project needs to start. I have a point of view, and my point of view is that value-based care is going to take a, a significant leap forward over the next four years. Because of this administration, we are gonna see, uh, payment models lean more towards wellness, and more people are gonna have access to insurance models that are going to pay on the quality of outcomes.

Therefore, we should do x and y. That's where predictions are valuable. It's, it's establishing your point of view. When I was A-C-I-O-I always looked at, at presentations, especially strategy presentations, and asked myself what is their point of view. And actually towards, towards, uh, the middle of my tenure as ACIO, I used to require my staff to tell me what their point of view is.

Why are we doing this IT project? I mean, what is it going to deliver? Even, even if they weren't like the, the lead, uh, executive on the project . I still wanted to know that everybody understood that this was going to lead to this outcome. And we are going for that outcome because we believe these things.

Because we believe that access to care is a fundamental right, because we believe, you know, what is our, what is our belief, what is our point of view? What is driving these projects? So my, so what on all of these predictions is, uh, develop your point of view. Know what your point of view is. It's not just a.

Fun little exercise. It's not, um, you know, just, just a way to, you know, try to predict the future. It is really looking at the trends that are happening. Follow the money, figure out where the money's going. In a lot of cases, that'll tell you what the trends, where it's going to be driven. And that could be in the public side as well as the private side.

Uh, it could also be in the investment side. You can see where the health tech investments are gonna go. Uh, and then determine what your point of view is. Where is healthcare gonna go? Where's the emphasis gonna be? Where should I place my betts as a healthcare leader? Alright, that's all for today. If you know of someone that might benefit from our channel, please forward them a note.

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Thanks for listening. That's all for now.