WhamTech EIQ Products-based solutions are ideally suited to address the  numerous challenges facing the healthcare industry

A recent report, "World Healthcare IT Market: Trends & Forecast (2010 – 2015)" from marketsandmarkets.com, dated August 2011, describes the challenges.  A link to a report summary, and the report itself, is available at www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/healthcare-information-technology-market-136.html.  The report summary expects that the world healthcare IT market will grow from $99.6 billion to $162.2 billion at a CAGR of 10.2% from 2010 to 2015.

  HEALTHCARE REPORT CHALLENGES

The report summary lists some of the associated challenges, as follows:

• Need to lower costs through better clinical/administrative workflow, but also more efficient and error-free healthcare delivery.  This is not only driven by market forces, but US government legislation and regulations are also demanding lower costs.
  
  
• The areas of rapid growth with an average CAGR of 15.1% are electronic health (medical) record (EHR) systems, which is the highest, computerized physician order entry systems (CPOE) next, and point of care, specialty care, surgical care and intensive care information systems are the rest.
  
  
• Low cost IT solutions, financing programs and interoperable solutions are the focus of healthcare IT solution providers.
  
  
• Healthcare delivery methods are expected to evolve from clinic-centric to patient-centric models.
  
  
• Being able to provide sometimes the same information, but tailored to meet the individual needs of each of the three major healthcare industry participants: Patients, providers and payers.

Overall, the report summarizes the challenges as the "need to cut healthcare costs, (while meeting) immense demand for faster, better healthcare delivery along with reduced medical errors."

  WHAMTECH ADDRESSES MANY OF THE CHALLENGES IN HEALTHCARE

WhamTech (and others) are increasingly convinced that WhamTech EIQ Product-based solutions could address many of the challenges listed in this and other reports, namely, the top ten (not in any order):

• Lower costs by improving access to multiple data sources, combining multiple types of data and thereby improving processes and efficiency.
  
  
• Enable a true virtual EHR that could potentially cross organizational barriers that would be difficult with a single-point physical EHR.
  
  
• Increase effectiveness through less data-related errors, increased availability of information and relationships among information.
  
  
• Enable access of SMBs to previously too-expensive software and open up SMB markets for software vendors in a virtual cloud/SaaS architecture and an app store.
  
  
• Enable a means of collaboration/cooperation/information sharing among healthcare providers, hospitals, labs, clinics, nursing homes, research facilities, insurance companies, etc., without copying or moving data – a working-level integration, not just an information exchange.
  
  
• Run BI/analytics, including link analysis for treatment optimization, waste detection, fraud detection, liability exposure, regulations, CDC research and monitoring, outcome-based pricing, improved treatments, etc.
  
  
• Enable new processes to be added and old processes changed as needed without changing existing physical data structures using business process management and other tools and standard data models, including ontology-based standard data models.
  
  
• Monitor subscribed changes in information in near real-time to be aware of critical key performance indicators and identify anomalies through business activity monitoring (BAM) or complex event processing (CEP).
  
  
• Enable write back to data sources where appropriate access and transaction management is available.
  
  
• Extend beyond software and data integration to include instruments, monitoring device logs and real-time signals, eventually including decision support software and intelligence community–related sensor data monitoring and information geometry tools.