EHRs to Deliver Health Care Savings of $78 Billion Over Next 5 Years

EHRs will deliver cost savings to the global health care industry of $78 billion between 2014 and 2019, becoming an integral part of future digital health care initiatives, forecasts a new report from hi-tech analyst house Juniper Research.

The report, "Digital Health: Remote Monitoring, Smart Accessories & EHR Cost-Savings 2014-2019," argues that EHRs are crucial as the supporting infrastructure for a wide range of digital health care and mHealth projects. New accountable care organization initiatives, where health care providers are remunerated according to the measured "wellness" of a patient population, are resulting in a rethink in how health care needs should be addressed, supporting the evolution of digital health care.

EHR Central to Digital Health Ecosystem
The report finds that the medical profession will increasingly rely on EHRs to support disparate elements of digital health: "Advanced EHRs will provide the 'glue' to bring together the devices, stakeholders, and medical records in the future connected health care environment," observes Anthony Cox, the report's author. He also notes that health care workers have become significantly more engaged in digital health care in the last 18 months.

However, the report cautioned that positive developments are being offset by the lack of randomised controlled mHealth trials and the diverse nature of the global health care industry. This means that digital health care approaches often require buy-in from a large number of stakeholders, and have to be tailored for each geographical region.    

Regulators Embrace Digital Health Care
Nevertheless, it argued that two key factors are expected to buoy the digital health care sector. First, regulatory authorities are embracing the role of digital health care and imposing less stringent regulatory obligations on digital health care companies. Second, the principle of technologically advanced health care is becoming popularized through Apple's HealthKit and Samsung's SAMI  (Samsung Architecture for Multimodal Interactions) user interfaces.

The whitepaper "Taking the Pulse of Digital Healthcare" is available to download from the Juniper Research website together with further details of the full report and the attendant Digital Healthcare Excel.

Source: Juniper Research