IT Trends in Healthcare to Watch

 

7. Cognitive Automation (CA)

Among the emerging healthcare technology trends, it is worth highlighting CA. Cognitive Automation is the next-level tendency for true digital transformation. These days, it’s among emerging IT market trends in healthcare, but the tech package and applicability are about to change the state of managing an industry to the core. It takes the achievements of RPA but applies the mimicking of human behavior beyond the repetitive tasks. In short, it serves as the digital brain of the healthcare organization.

In essence, CA takes the automation capabilities of current software providers and applies ML algorithms to introduce decision velocity in the industry. It becomes possible to process zettabytes of data within seconds and provide decision-makers with ready-to-accept recommendations backed up by real-time data. The ultimate goal is to establish a self-driving enterprise where all the operational processes are automated.

These days, not every healthcare payer can afford such technology. But the prospects of providing a unified operating system and increasing the speed and accuracy of decisions are worth investing in. Within a couple of years, CA will become more common and open to numerous healthcare industry representatives.

Cognitive Automation Adoption in Merck Healthcare

Merck Healthcare uses the latest medical technology of CA from Aera Technology as a central part of digitizing and modernizing its legacy systems. In particular, the company managed to unite several ERP and manufacturing execution software types and a separate system for supply chain planning under a sole solution.

The technology adopts ML algorithms to create more accurate forecasts considering numerous internal and external factors. Moreover, CA adoption in Merck Healthcare improved cost savings, processes, and security measures. Nevertheless, the novelty of technology causes problems with trust at the moment.

8. FinTech Integration

Healthcare spending is likely to reach $6 trillion by 2027. Until recently, the healthcare system tended to be an old-school bureaucratic system. But now, many hospitals and medical institutions have turned to the tech industry to improve their filing and billing processes, and tech has begun delivering.

The financial technology covers insurance, management services, digital payments, settlement services, capital-raising, deposits, and credit services. Thus it facilitates and streamlines healthcare processes by lowering the cost of financial services. Through robotic investment advice, P2P lending, mobile payments, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and blockchain technologies, fintech boosts the healthcare sector by mitigating inefficiencies in its payment plans.

And even more — FinTech solutions may help reduce income inequality and financial exclusion and enable low to moderate-income individuals to afford and access healthcare services.

We’ve already seen several successful cases, such as PayZen, which calculates a person’s health care cost and ability to pay those fees after insurance, then sets up a payment plan for and an automated system to help streamline the billing process for hospitals. Or Nomi Health — a healthcare startup that offers employers a payment platform that connects directly to healthcare providers, which it says can save everyone money.