As highlighted by the several studies, the worldwide healthcare IT market will grow steadily and consistently during 2016 to 2020. But the CAGR growth of the healthcare IT market will be impacted by several factors — emerging technologies, healthcare services cost, privacy/security, and use of data analytics tools. Hence, the developers have to build healthcare IT solutions by using the latest technologies, and explore ways to make them function smoothly on varying devices and platforms. Also, they must keep in mind the emerging trends that will directly impact the healthcare IT market in 2017.

7 Trends that will Shape Healthcare IT Industry in 2017

1) Reducing Infrastructure Cost through Cloud Technologies

A clinic or hospital can easily generate more revenue by facilitating remote healthcare service. The medical practitioners and staff can use the latest information technology to provide healthcare services to more patients. But the hospitals or clinics still need to explore ways to make the remote healthcare services affordable by reducing infrastructure cost. The cloud platforms and technologies have helped many enterprises to operate healthcare solutions and provide remote healthcare services without building physical infrastructure. More and more clinics are expected to leverage the benefits of cloud computing in 2017 to curtail cost of healthcare service delivery.

2) Storing Information in Hybrid Storage Solutions

The latest healthcare applications and analytics enable clinics to collect a variety of patient data consistently. Many healthcare organizations even use analytics to effectuate healthcare management based on real-time data. Hence, healthcare organizations will soon look the right option to store the huge volume of patient data efficiently and securely. The organizations have to invest a huge amount of fund to store and maintain the patient data through on-premise servers. Hence, many clinics will store a huge amount of patient data in the cloud to avoid investing in on-premise servers. Likewise, many organizations will opt for hybrid storage solutions to combine the robust security provided by on-premise servers and enhanced scalability provided by cloud storage options.

3) Internet of Things

Many analysts believe the smart machine to machine communication facilitated by Internet of Things (IoT) will completely transform the healthcare industry in the longer run. In addition to facilitating patient data collections and electronic health records updates, IoT will further enable patients to avail remote healthcare services anytime and anywhere. But the healthcare organizations have to make upgrade their solutions and infrastructure to leverage the benefits of IoT fully. Also, they need to train the medical practitioners and healthcare providers to provide prompt and relevant healthcare service to each patient through the connected devices.

4) Artificial Intelligence

As highlighted by several surveys, many enterprises will use a variety of artificial intelligence to make their software applications and solutions deliver personalized user experience in 2017. Like other businesses, healthcare organizations will also invest in artificial intelligence and machine learning in 2017. However, they have to embed specialized artificial intelligence in their healthcare equipments and solutions to analyze huge volumes of patient data collected through connected machines, and diagnose a variety of diseases accurately with minimal human intervention. However, the artificial intelligence used by individual healthcare organizations will differ.

5) Software-Defined Everything (SDx) Technology

At present, software defined everything (SDx) technology is one of the hottest trends in enterprise software development. In addition to helping enterprises to avoid investing in hardware, SDx further emphasizes on virtualization and automation. Also, it requires enterprises to connect their servers, networks, data storage options and systems tightly through a software-defined data center (SDCC). The healthcare organizations can build SDDCs to enhance the functionality of their solutions through virtualization, abstraction and cloud computing. Many healthcare organizations will switch to SDx technology in 2017 to build scalable infrastructure through cloud technologies and curtail hardware cost through virtualization.

6) Growing Demand for Home Healthcare

The advanced technologies enable patients to avail prompt and relevant healthcare services remotely without frequent hospital visits. Many patients nowadays use a variety of applications and solutions to avail home healthcare times and inexpensively. Likewise, many clinics facilitate remote healthcare services to provide healthcare services and assistance to a higher number of patients with few doctors and medical staff. A number of studies have shown a consistent increase in home healthcare market. The growing demand for home healthcare services will impact the healthcare IT market in 2017.

7) Preventing Large Scale Cyber Attacks

Many studies have shown that most IT platforms lack the robust security features required to keep the stored data secure and inaccessible. Hence, healthcare organizations have to use the latest security mechanism and encryption techniques to keep the patient data 100% secure. At the same time, they also need to explore ways to avoid disastrous consequence of large scale cyber attacks. They have to include robust security features in their healthcare applications and solutions to keep the data transmission and storage secure. Also, the healthcare organizations have to assess the security of their applications, resources and infrastructures consistently to prevent large scale cyber attacks.

However, the trends in healthcare IT industry keep changing at regular intervals. Also, a single trend may not impact the development of all healthcare IT applications and solutions. Hence, the healthcare software developers must keep track of the emerging trend and technologies to build healthcare application that will remain relevant over a longer period of time.