3 takeaways from CHIME21: EHRs, Big Tech and VCs look to the future of health

The coronavirus pandemic has usurped normal operations of American healthcare, spurring an unprecedented shift to digitally delivered care and leaving many providers scrambling to retain patient volume and revenue.

The public health and financial devastation of COVID-19 can’t be overlooked, but the pandemic has also created opportunities to leverage tech for EHR vendors, Big Tech and health IT leaders, experts said at last week’s CHIME21 Spring Forum, hosted by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives.

“In terms of durable change, I think we’re in that window now where we need to think about what is that new normal and where do we go from here,” Cerner President Don Trigg said at the conference.

Some of the biggest names in EHRs shared lessons from COVID-19 and reiterated the importance of bolstering the U.S. data reporting infrastructure, while Amazon, Microsoft and Google executives teased what healthcare arenas they might disrupt next. Similarly, some noted venture capitalists shared where forward-thinking hospital CIOs should prioritize investments at this unique moment.

Here are the three biggest takeaways from the event.

EHR vendors eye the road ahead

COVID-19 has shined a harsh light on the IT failures of the U.S. healthcare infrastructure, where data input and sharing can still be a manual process. Top leaders at major EHR vendors said it was imperative to modernize the country’s public health reporting, including record-keeping for COVID-19 vaccinations.

When Howard Messing, CEO of Meditech, an EHR company with a web-based record used by a quarter of all hospitals in the U.S., got vaccinated recently at Boston’s Fenway Park, there was “not a computer in sight,” Messing said. “Clearly, we’ve got to figure out how to do this better. We can’t rely on paper records anymore.”

Digital health professionals and hospital CIOs are increasingly bullish about the potential of tech like quantum computing and artificial intelligence in healthcare. But the industry should first focus on low-hanging fruit, like smoother data-sharing and the patient-provider relationship, according to the CEO.

“There’s a lot we can do to make things better and I think we need to position the market to focus on those things,” Messing said.

As adoption of virtual tools snowballed during the pandemic, provider organizations should start thinking more deeply about patient relationships, copying industries like banking and travel that rely more heavily on digital-first services — and have seen rising consumer engagement and satisfaction as a result, according to Trigg.

“Understanding communication preferences is a critical dimension as far as engagement,” Trigg said, noting provider clients want their EHR to help them drive service-line growth and make money at Medicare and Medicaid rates, along with driving care outside the hospital’s four walls.

The software executives also addressed rising interest among Big Tech in healthcare, noting IT vendors — even entrenched, powerful players like Epic, Cerner and Meditech —​ shouldn’t discount the influence being amassed by companies like Amazon, Google and Apple.

“They are plugged into the consumer, and our industry needs to be coordinated with that,” Messing said.

Vendors should also be keeping a wary eye on Washington, as shifting payment models nudge the industry toward things like value-based care.

In the future, “we’ll see a new value equation around the person, focused on cost and convenience and experience,” Trigg said. “We also have to think a great deal about the governmental role and policy now with Washington as the largest regulator and payer.”

Twin data-sharing rules that kicked into gear earlier this month should help patients access their data. The vendors reiterated their support for the sweeping regulations and how they would lower barriers to medical data sharing between systems.

However, Epic CEO Judy Faulkner took a more…