The start of the year at Vim has been filled with excitement as we empower more customers and develop more solutions for value-based care (VBC). Recently, there have been many predictions about what will happen in the healthcare system over the next 11+ months.
As a middleware platform for healthcare, we help our customers integrate into clinical workflows, which means we’re well-positioned to see the benefits of ongoing innovation. Benefits like improving clinic and patient experiences, enhancing the quality of care, and reducing the total cost of care.
This post delves into the latest healthcare innovation trends observed within our company and by developers on our platform. Here are some recent trends that have caught my attention:
Trend 1: Artificial Intelligence Solutions Are Changing Healthcare and Are Changing Because of Healthcare
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning represent significant opportunities in our field. Healthcare, with its numerous flawed and broken processes, presents the ideal environment to test its efficacy.
The payers, MSOs, and developers we work with have rich insights, data, and robust applications powered by AI, and they are poised to make a lasting impact in healthcare. A common theme we’ve observed, and why they come to a middleware platform like Vim, is that they need that last-mile connectivity that integrates their AI-powered data and applications directly into clinical workflow.
It is here – where the provider is doing their work at the point of patient care – that AI-powered solutions will drive positive results and can gain valuable insights, contributing to the intelligence loop.
Think about an AI-powered solution that helps a clinician decide on a patient’s care based on longitudinal clinical data or data from other sources like claims-based data or wearables. Every decision the clinician makes and records in the Electronic Health Record (EHR), and every application they interact with in the context of the patient visit, for example, feeds the AI solution more intelligence and informs the next interaction and the next.
If this insight and action occur within a closed system and outside the clinical workflow, the speed and scale at which all parties learn, change, and benefit is compromised.
Using Vim’s middleware solution as a real-world example, AI will help advance the way we integrate into EHRs, help us rapidly expand our EHR integration roadmap, and better enable developers on our platform to deploy solutions that improve care, empower decision-making, and more.
By exposing AI to contextual clinical workflows and multiple data points, we can teach it new things and help transform healthcare from within.
Trend 2: Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) Accelerate and Tech-Specific Best Practices Will Emerge
When organizations combine, they often bring different technologies with them. An Electronic Health Record (EHR) is a technology that can vary from one organization to another. These EHR systems are often deeply ingrained into clinical operations and are associated with some form of debt (time, money, and adoption).
Two (or more) EHRs mean data sharing, decision-making, patient-specific insights, and quality and risk adjustment operations can be quite distinct. The newly formed organization often faces a dilemma: either rip out one system or find band-aid solutions to make unique systems work together.
Instead, innovators in our space are seeking a technology strategy that is EHR-agnostic. With an EHR agnostic solution like Vim, healthcare organizations can ensure that their clinical nodes learn to speak to one another, and the users in their provider networks can maintain their workflows and processes while leveraging the latest solutions to enhance and expand in-EHR capabilities.
Instead of ripping out and replacing tech and operations that are working now, a best practice will be to engage with EHR integrators and middleware platforms like Vim that keep providers in their preferred EHRs while still accelerating value-based care initiatives.
Trend 3: Value-Based Care (VBC) Requires Best-in-Breed Technology and Services
VBC is not yet where it should be. Still, as it gains popularity, we recognize that the high-value providers that successfully transition to VBC have the right programs, support/wraparound services, and resources (such as technology) built into their frameworks.
Industry analysts such as PitchBook have made the case that “…enablement is the most important mechanism by which the VBC transition will play out in the US over the next 5-10 years.”
So, how do we best serve providers at scale ahead of VBC catching up across the industry? We innovate faster and more accurately and empower VBC enablers and providers to choose integrated tools and solutions that help them do their part in building more value in a fractured and inconsistent landscape.
At Vim, we empower providers to engage with insights and actions at the point of care with Vim Connect. Now, we are rolling out advanced capabilities to allow developers to build their applications on top of Vim’s in-EHR integration layer.
Vim’s developer platform is the first step in creating an application marketplace for healthcare technology and giving VBC enablers and providers the keys to building more value in our healthcare system.
Trend 4: Providers Want Control of Their Technology Stack
Software engineering has seen rapid growth and investment, resulting in the development of numerous tools and frameworks that enhance the capabilities of engineers – including those focused on healthcare.
On the other hand, physicians have traditionally relied on manual processes and face challenges in adopting and implementing new technologies due to cost, training, and resistance to change.
Improvements in healthcare software development have not translated into better efficiency or empowerment for physicians. So, what’s the disconnect? Healthcare providers require solutions that simplify the healthcare process, allowing them to focus on patients, particularly those who need the most care.
Developers need a way to tap into how physicians work in clinical settings to offer these advancements. Closed systems, multiple logins across portals, more admins than doctors, and the inability to scale practices will not get us there.
Providers are being introduced to solutions like Vim that empower decision-making, reduce burden, and help them transition to alternative payment models and operations. In other words, they are getting control back over their technology stack.
They are shifting to a provider-driven technology ecosystem that allows them to choose the tools that work best for them and their patients – solutions that are both sponsored and available for investment.
This approach is reshaping the journey towards alternative payment models and risk assumptions for providers. Providers are also eager to collaborate across the healthcare continuum, and they want technology to bridge the gap between them and the healthcare communities they and their patients belong to.
Providers want to leverage technology that opens the doors to individual ambulatory settings like independent mental health professionals, free-standing testing and imaging facilities, and not just integrated healthcare systems. The result is better coordination among healthcare providers, leading to improved patient outcomes.
When providers have the autonomy to choose their technology and partner with technology and data-driven enablement organizations (e.g. MSOs and VBC enablers), it reduces friction and aligns their technology with unique strategies and objectives. This freedom drives innovation and efficiency and ultimately helps providers transition to value-based care.
At Vim, we’re at the forefront of this healthcare tech revolution. Vim is building payer, provider, and developer-friendly infrastructure and intelligent tools that allow everyone to create scalable products that solve big problems in healthcare.
Through our middleware capabilities and developer platform, our industry will be able to challenge the status quo and empower developers to create game-changing applications that will lead to a future of accessible, personalized, and data-driven healthcare. Our goal is to see these trends become a reality.
We want to hear from you if you share in the mission to build a more connected and collaborative healthcare system.
