Medical office software is an integral part of successful office management. Simplifies clinical and administrative duties. However, healthcare tools must adapt to changing environments while adhering to the latest regulations. Discover trends affecting the future of medical office software and predictions about how new capabilities will impact providers and clients.
Improved interoperability and API standardization
Interoperability allows patients to access electronic health information and transfer it more easily to providers. It also facilitates data sharing with federal agencies for reporting and prior authorization purposes. The new guidelines support a future where consumers can use their favorite smartphone app to view medical records from multiple providers. Indeed, we expect technology vendors to improve interoperability and application programming interface (API) access, giving physicians and patients more integrated software options.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Interoperability and Patient Access Rule, finalized in 2020, requires certain payers to share patient health information upon request and add the information they receive to client records. The goal is to provide “due records” that accompany patients during their health journey.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) requires health information technology developers to use standardized APIs. Provides API certification criteria for EHRs and sets fees, transparency, and business practice standards.
Several medical office platforms allow for vaccination and meaningful utilization reporting. For example, AdvancedMD supports interoperability, allowing practitioners to integrate with other systems, share patient information with providers, and submit reports.
[Read more: Moderna Executive on Advancing Health Equity in Medical Research]
Creating a voice recognition tool
Speech recognition is a major trend for medical office software, including practice management platforms and electronic health records (EHR). Voice features use artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP). These technologies will continue to advance with machine learning (ML) capabilities, allowing the technologies to learn from previous conversations, resulting in more accurate transcriptions.
In addition, physicians and office administrators can expect voice tools to support multiple tasks. Mobile and desktop apps will allow users to pre-authorize insurance, check schedules and access research.
Currently, NextGen Healthcare (part of Thom Bravo) converts patient-provider conversations into temporary transcripts with 90% accuracy. On the other hand, Athenahealth offers a voice assistant for drafting orders, documenting examinations and retrieving clinical information.
Increased transparency around artificial intelligence in healthcare
Although artificial intelligence is extremely useful in healthcare, there are many questions. A recent executive order on artificial intelligence and ongoing work by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) suggest that responsible and transparent technology development will be a priority for medical office software. Indeed, 15 AI companies have committed to responsible model development, and 28 healthcare providers and payers have voluntarily agreed to the “safe, secure and reliable use, purchase and use of AI in healthcare”.
The development and implementation of AI technology should follow the principles of FAVES, which will lead to “health outcomes that are fair, appropriate, valid, effective and safe”. Software vendors agree to disclose information about their funding, AI training data, performance metrics, and more.
Speech recognition is a major trend for medical office software, including practice management platforms and electronic health records (EHR).
Prioritizing automation
The American Hospital Association (AHA) said, “America will face a shortage of up to 124,000 physicians by 2033 and will need to hire at least 200,000 nurses annually to meet increased demand and replace retiring nurses.” The need for lower-wage health care workers such as home health aides and medical assistants will increase significantly, with Mercer estimating that the United States needs about 10.7 million individuals. Still, we will face “significant shortages of critical health care workers in this country — more than 3.2 million workers will be missing within five years.”
Workforce shortages will affect patient care and workers. While software cannot replace the human touch, it can automate workflow and reduce manual tasks. Current use cases for robotic process automation (RPA) include demand management and meeting scheduling.
We anticipate that medical practices will seek digital opportunities through RPA and other technologies. Healthcare software will expand automation capabilities to offer more value to healthcare practices. Indeed, the RPA market is expected to grow to more than $13 billion by 2030.
[Read more: Nurx CEO: Listen to Your Customers And They’ll Tell You How to Pivot]
Expansion of telehealth and telemedicine
In 2022, the North American telemedicine market will be $41.85 billion and the telehealth market size will be $59.35 billion. Fortune Business Insights predicts that the global telemedicine market will grow from $94.44 billion in 2023 to $286.22 billion by 2030, and the global telehealth market will expand from $142.96 billion in 2023 to $504.24 billion dollars by 2030.
The rise of telehealth and telemedicine is due in part to the growing demand for virtual care services and the need to reduce health care costs. Accordingly, we expect medical office software vendors to expand their integrations with telehealth platforms or include virtual care features with bundled service plans.
Developers will improve collaboration tools, patient-physician interaction features, and provider capabilities as the market becomes more competitive. In addition, key industry developments include partnerships between remote patient monitoring (RPM) and telehealth providers and continued venture capital investment in virtual care delivery.
Support for wearable devices and remote patient monitoring
In 2021, 39% of Deloitte survey respondents said they own a smartwatch. Deloitte has predicted that by 2024, 440 million consumer health and wellness wearables will be shipped worldwide. He said: “The percentage of consumers using them to manage chronic conditions and detect symptoms of serious illnesses is likely to increase.” Caregivers and doctors also monitor health remotely through sensors and patches.
Patients increasingly want to share data with healthcare providers. Interoperability standards should improve physician access, and patients expect medical office solutions to support data transfer from third-party devices, including smartwatches and medical RPM hardware and sensors.
Leveraging generative artificial intelligence
According to Bain & Company, “75% of healthcare executives believe that generative artificial intelligence has reached a tipping point in its ability to reshape the industry.” In the next two to five years, leaders will look to generative artificial intelligence to help them with treatment recommendations, predictive analytics and clinical decision support.
We are already seeing generative AI tools emerging in medical office software. athenaOne has announced that practitioners will soon have AI-generated socialization reports and canned responses. The company believes its AI features will help athenaOne network providers who “spend more than 35% of clinical inbox time managing patient case documents”.
Epic Systems and Microsoft joined forces to incorporate GPT-4 into EHRs, and Google Cloud debuted an AI-powered claims acceleration suite. In addition, Doximity introduced the ChatGPT beta tool in February 2023. Doximity GPT is a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliant writing assistant.
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