Unsurprisingly, more healthcare organizations are realizing that clinicians and researchers simply do not have time to manually code and prepare data to capture features of interest. They are instead looking to AI-powered technologies such as natural language processing (NLP) to analyze and extract that data, yielding insights that drive better patient care, lower costs, and stronger operational performance.

As the industry moves toward value-based care models, clinicians have an even greater need to optimize their patient care through access to high-value information. According to physicians like Bill Hayes, MD, CMO at CPSI and a member of the HIMSS Electronic Health Record Association Executive Council, now is the time for stakeholders to improve EHR system functionality, and for EHR designers to enable input from clinicians and thereby ensure the most clinically relevant information is available at the point of care.

Practices that want to be resilient in emergencies and better serve their patients should move to all-digital systems. Those that don’t will quickly be left behind. Happily, going digital can also make complying with HIPAA and other privacy regulations more affordable. One major piece of the digital puzzle is electronic signatures on a variety of forms, including intake and consent forms. In this article, we’ll explore this state-of-the-art technology and look at where electronic signatures can remove friction and redundancy for providers.

Communication errors are disturbingly common in healthcare, affecting patient outcomes and care quality. The Journal of Patient Safety reports that almost half of malpractice claims involve communication failures. Fixing these errors is a question of systems, not people. Improving the communications system is critical to improving clinical workflows, and better workflows benefit everyone. Advanced clinical communication & collaboration platforms that put real-time, contextual information into the hands of care team members improve cost, quality, and experience for patients and providers alike.

While nuclear cardiac imaging and echocardiography have been the mainstays of cardiovascular imaging modalities, MRI and CT offer cardiologists additional diagnostic tools that could improve outcomes in patients with heart disease. For example, advances in coronary CT technology allow for novel analyses such as removal of artifacts related to coronary calcification, detailed coronary plaque characterization, and even dynamic myocardial perfusion analysis.

Automated phone menus and rudimentary chatbots (only capable of providing maddening yes-or-no answers) are being replaced by next-generation intelligent virtual assistants (IVA) that leverage natural language. These bots provide a more human-like experience that is personalized, immediately accessible, and empathetic—while also being secure and HIPAA compliant.

The one thing healthcare isn’t short on is data. The industry has data coming in from all directions, but that’s not always a perfect scenario—data that is duplicated, low quality, or siloed can present barriers to better analysis. For healthcare systems to improve the way they want, data needs to be organized and unified.