Before embarking on the quest for change, an organization’s whole system—its greater purpose, leadership and culture—requires scrutiny.  

Technology and healthcare reform are driving shifts in healthcare from volume to value and from providers to patients. Organizations ready for these changes are the ones with the best chances of successfully braving the disruptive waters.

With billions of dollars invested in health IT adoption, EHR use is up but many think health IT’s ability to live up to its promise of improving healthcare delivery and outcomes is compromised unless systems can talk to each other. 

Healthcare providers face several significant barriers to providing patients with access to their health data, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Informatics Association.

The U.S. patient portal market is expected to increase by 221 percent, reaching $898.4 million by 2017, up from $279.8 million last year, according to a new analysis from Frost & Sullivan.

Shared decision making refers to a set of principles that can be employed by patients and their physicians to explicitly incorporate patient preferences and values into clinical decision making.  Past research shows that patients, who have an enhanced knowledge of their medical conditions and treatment alternatives, demonstrate a reduced anxiety when it comes to medical decision making.

BOSTON--Individuals are willing to donate data, but assert that ownership of such data ultimately lies with them, said Kevin Patrick, MD, professor of family and preventive medicine at the University of California, San Diego, at Strata Rx 2013. Researchers also consider these self-reported data as reliable and dependable, he said.

BOSTON—“We don’t have big data, but gazillions of pods of little data,” said Marcia Kean, Feinstein Kean Healthcare, at Strata Rx 2013 on Sept. 26. However, data liquidity—or the rapid, seamless and secure exchange of useful, standards-based information among authorized individuals and institutional senders—is poised to significantly advance biomedical research, she said.