From patient engagement to care coordination, there is a place and conversation for everyone at HIMSS’ annual conference next month in Orlando. In fact, HIMSS has even created a dedicated list of social media hashtags to help all attendees discover like-minded peers. 
Amidst the many conversations that will take place this year, we expect these three trends to take center stage:
Trend 1: Integrated Software to Combat Physician Burnout
There are nine program sessions at HIMSS20 with the word “burnout” in the title, and equally as many with physician and staff burnout as the core theme of the session description. And for good reason. Providers are overwhelmed by regulations, patient demands and inefficient technology that was originally designed to ease stress.
According to our 2019 Healthcare Technology Report, nearly 60% of providers said they rely on four or more different technology solutions to manage daily functions within their practice or pharmacy. The lack of integration between systems causes disjointed communications and inefficient work processes.
It’s vital the healthcare industry re-examine these interoperability frustrations and create integrated solutions that create a seamless, frictionless workflow to ease physician burnout. When we eliminate these redundant tasks, we allow providers to focus on patient care and profitability.
Trend 2: Axe the Fax To Increase Compliance
Over the past decade, almost every industry has decreased or eliminated its reliance on fax machines – except for healthcare – where more than 9 billion faxes are still sent every year. In fact, 90% of hospitals still use old school fax machines.
This form of manual communication is not only costly and inefficient but healthcare’s dependence on fax poses security concerns to patient privacy. In order to join today’s HIPAA-compliant environment, it’s time for the healthcare industry to ‘axe the fax.’
However, as manual faxing is eliminated, healthcare providers still need a way to exchange information and transfer documents. Moving toward web-based communication is the first step for healthcare providers to create more efficient workflows with improved security procedures. Vendors and thought leaders will be tackling these privacy and information-sharing challenges next month in HIMSS’ Cyber Command Center and on the Innovation Live stage, among others.
Trend 3: Enhance Loyalty Through Better Patient Communication
Eighty-one percent of consumers are not satisfied with their healthcare experience, making patient engagement a critically important topic for leaders at HIMSS this year. In fact, this is the first year the tradeshow has created a pavilion for consumerism and patient engagement. Patient engagement technology – including voice, email, SMS and video – are becoming equally as important for providers as EMRs. In fact, a roundtable hosted by Impact Advisors revealed that 17 out of 22 hospital CIOs rank improving digital health and optimizing the patient experience as their top two priorities.
Heading to the superbowl of HealthIT the week of March 9th? Stop by our booth to discover how Updox is improving health outcomes through an all-in-one collaboration platform, with options for patient engagement, provider communications and internal productivity.
