State of Healthcare Report: Uncovering Healthcare Barriers and Opportunities

In the 2021 State of Healthcare Report, HIMSS and its Trust partners—Accenture, The Chartis Group and ZS—uncover healthcare barriers and offer key takeaways on current trends, opportunities and insights to drive real progress.

A phased approach was leveraged to develop the report. HIMSS conducted a series of 12 qualitative interviews with subject matter experts from across the health ecosystem to identify the most pressing challenges faced today. Three of the highest priority areas—digital health, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and financial health—were then used by the Trust partners as the starting point to design the quantitative approach.

The quantitative market intelligence in the report was collected from March to April 2021 and represents 2,743 respondents in the United States—225 health systems, 309 clinicians, 147 payers and 2,062 patients. Participants answered a variety of questions relating to digital health, AI/ML and financial health.

Digital Health

The pandemic propelled digital health utilization to new heights, creating new healthcare barriers and also promising lasting impacts. By keeping close tabs on digital health trends, industry leaders can unearth future opportunities for innovation and proactively invest in the necessary tools and technology.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Utilization of AI/ML initiatives are still relatively nascent, but segments are beginning to pinpoint key benefits amid lingering reservations. Being sensitive to communities’ understanding and use of these technologies, as well as their concerns, can help leaders find and evaluate AI/ML opportunity areas while considering their organization’s existing assets.

Financial Health

Perceptions of financial health, particularly in the current state of the pandemic, depend largely on the segment’s specific role and how they view the impact of an aging population. Understanding critical challenges to the bottom line and the often-disparate views of alternate segments within the industry can help leaders pinpoint opportunities for greater efficiencies of care.

HIMSS Trust Partnership

The HIMSS Trust partnership is a consortium of leaders from across the healthcare and technology space who are collecting, analyzing and reporting on in-depth, data-driven market intelligence. Insights gathered by the Trust will unveil trends and challenges to help the industry prepare and predict for the next three to five years.