COVER STORY TRENDS Health care outlook Year in review and trends to watch for in 2018 B y M ari -L en D e G uzMan T he continuously evolving dynamics of health care means practitioners must constantly keep abreast of issues that can affect delivery of care, clinic management and day-to-day operations. As 2017 draws to a close, Canadian Chiropractor explores emerging trends, issues and opportunities in the health care sector. Several factors and events happening in 2018 can have direct or indirect impact on chiropractic practices, and industry ARTIFICIAL observers say practitioners need to take stock. The previous year has been marked by continued INTELLIGENCE push toward patient-centred care, which has Industry analysts spurred growth and focus on interprofessional, believe there is huge potential collaborative health-care environments. With more patients demanding more from their health-care for AI application in health care providers, practitioners are increasingly looking at management, ways to deliver better, more efficient care to their particularly in patients that moves away from siloed, redundant care and toward more open collaboration with diagnostics, data analytics and other allied health practitioners. research. According to David Turcotte, global industry director with Microsoft, greater mobility and access to data are changing the face of health-care and patients’ perspectives. Today, patients are able to compare and review their doctors online the same way they would evaluate a restaurant or a product. MARI-LEN DE GUZMAN is the editor of Canadian Chiropractor magazine. Email her at [email protected]. 20 Canadian Chiropractor December 2017 Innovations in digital health are also transforming the way patients are receiving care. “New health system technology, such as moving beyond basic EMR (electronic medical record) infrastructure to full patient-focused CRM (customer relationship management) solutions, has enabled providers to integrate extended care teams, enhance patient satisfaction and improve the efficacy and efficiency of care,” Turcotte wrote in a recent blog post. “Organizations are aggregating tremendous amounts of data – they just need to figure out how to use it to drive innovation, boost the quality of care outcomes, and cut costs.” Electronic health Over the last decade, there has been a steady increase in adoption of technologies among health-care organizations across Canada – from hospitals and community health centres to doctors’ clinics – that enabled the digitization of patient health records. Expect a continuation of this trend, however, true integration of these electronic health records across multiple organizations leaves much to be desired. “The majority of health-care technologies that we see today are used within health care provider organization,” explains Catherine Hunter, partner and national health care consulting leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Toronto. “What we are still lacking is that connectivity between those various solutions. It’s growing but we have a lot of www.canadianchiropractor.ca
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