Heading into 2025, healthcare organizations nonetheless face workflow shortages, each on the scientific and IT facet. Progress in synthetic intelligence and automation will allow tech leaders to deal with these workflow shortages at well being techniques.
Nonetheless, as healthcare IT leaders proceed experimenting in generative AI (GenAI), it might not be as a lot of a high precedence as you may suppose, in response to IDC’s Worldwide C-Suite Tech Survey, which was carried out in September and October 2024.
“Curiously, given all of the give attention to generative AI, solely 25% of healthcare respondents reported implementing AI/GenAI as their group’s high precedence for the following 12 months,” Lynne A. Dunbrack, group vp for the general public sector at IDC, says in an e-mail interview.
The IDC report lists the highest three well being IT priorities in healthcare as investing in safety applied sciences (36.5%), bettering customer-focused digital experiences (36.1%), and advancing digital expertise throughout the group (33%).
Right here, InformationWeek provides insights from a number of trade consultants on the highest priorities for well being IT leaders in 2025.
Addressing Knowledge Storage Wants
Modernizing their infrastructure within the cloud to handle growing knowledge volumes needs to be a precedence for well being IT leaders, in response to the IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Healthcare Industry 2025 Predictions report.
“Cloud options and platforms supply extra than simply expanded expertise capability, scalability, and entry to managed companies,” the report said. “Additionally they act as a catalyst for knowledge trade and interoperability, enabling seamless integration of third-party functions and different platforms, making a extra open, dynamic, and progressive ecosystem.”
Scaling Precision Medication to a Broader Inhabitants
In 2025, well being IT leaders ought to increase precision drugs to a wider inhabitants, says Brigham Hyde, cofounder and CEO of Atropos Health, which provides a cloud-based analytics platform for changing healthcare knowledge into personalised proof. Precision drugs makes use of AI and digital instruments to make higher goal remedies potential. The expertise may assist drug growth and personalised therapies for sufferers. To scale precision drugs, the healthcare trade should preserve knowledge particular and personalised, in response to Hyde.
“Precision drugs historically focuses on small, extremely particular affected person cohorts with distinctive genetic, environmental, or life-style components,” Hyde says through e-mail. “Scaling it entails extending this degree of personalised care to bigger and extra numerous populations by leveraging applied sciences like AI and real-world knowledge.»
AI delivers the power to drill down on insights for particular circumstances at a granular degree, Hyde explains.
“As soon as these fashions produce tailor-made suggestions, they’ll scale to deal with broader populations by combining a number of centered fashions or synthesizing knowledge from completely different specialties,” he says.
Implementing Generative AI
Healthcare organizations will transfer on from merely experimenting with GenAI to finishing up enterprise-wide AI methods, in response to the IDC FutureScape report.
Though healthcare GenAI investments are anticipated to triple in healthcare by 2026, 75% of those healthcare Gen AI initiatives will fail to realize their “anticipated advantages” by 2027 because of points round trustworthiness of knowledge, “disconnected workflows, and end-user resistance,” IDC reported.
Within the meantime, in 2025, well being IT leaders might want to prioritize high quality assurance and doctor belief with GenAI and huge language fashions (LLMs), in response to Hyde.
“We might want to scrutinize functions for his or her scientific accuracy, transparency, and alignment with moral requirements,” Hyde says.
Within the coming 12 months, well being IT leaders will prioritize evaluating the accuracy they get from AI algorithms, in response to Michael Gao, CEO and cofounder of SmarterDx, which builds scientific AI functions to permit hospitals to realize income integrity, similar to checking for billing coding errors and income leakage.
“As we see extra widespread adoption of AI and particularly generative AI in healthcare, well being IT leaders are going to be prioritizing not simply the way to supervise an algorithm to grasp what degree of accuracy you’re getting, but in addition figuring out the way to even decide what degree of accuracy you need within the first place,” Gao says in an e-mail interview. “For instance, you need extraordinarily excessive accuracy algorithms for scientific care. There are a number of learnings round that earlier than we will actually use algorithms successfully in healthcare.”
Adopting Ambient AI
Hyde advises that well being tech leaders prioritize ambient AI, which operates within the background utilizing superior computing and AI to detect and generate insights with out a person’s involvement. The expertise can automate duties, in addition to personalize care supply, he says.
“By amassing and analyzing real-world knowledge within the background, ambient AI allows extra exact and actionable insights for illness administration, therapy optimization, and personalised drugs initiatives,” Hyde explains.
Ambient AI can scale back clinician burnout and enhance doctor retention by ambient dictation and transcription of notes from affected person visits, in response to Hyde.
Addressing Well being Inequities With AI
To deal with well being inequities and keep away from the biases in AI fashions, well being IT leaders ought to prioritize vetting AI use instances, says Ann Bilyew, government vp for well being and president of the Healthcare Options Group at WebMD/Web Manufacturers.
Retaining AI equitable means taking note of the social determinants of well being, that are components that affect well being similar to revenue, job, schooling degree, and ZIP code.
Though addressing well being inequities is a “worthwhile and promising aim” for AI, “it’s vital to notice that AI is simply pretty much as good as the fabric it’s skilled on, and that materials has inherent biases,” Bilyew tells us through e-mail. “AI can exacerbate these biases, so it’s essential that healthcare organizations totally vet these use instances to make sure they meet the meant aim.”
AI fashions ought to apply to sufferers throughout the board to stay reliable and equitable, suggests Dan Stevens, healthcare and life sciences options architect at Lenovo.
“To realize belief from care suppliers and sufferers to just accept AI-generated healthcare suggestions, it will likely be essential to make sure the info used for coaching is consultant of the final inhabitants, maintains affected person knowledge confidentiality, and avoids bias,” Stevens says through e-mail.
Investing in Cybersecurity Instruments
In IDC’s Worldwide C-Suite Tech Survey, 46.9% of healthcare respondents cited safety issues as the highest problem their organizations confronted when implementing Gen AI.
“Safety and cybersecurity instruments are a enterprise crucial to guard weak healthcare infrastructure in opposition to growing volumes of insidious ransomware assaults that put affected person security in danger,” Dunbrack says.
In the meantime, by 2027, growing cybersecurity dangers will drive healthcare organizations to make use of AI-based risk intelligence options to allow continuity of care and shield sufferers, in response to the IDC FutureScape report.
“To safeguard affected person security and guarantee uninterrupted healthcare companies, it’s crucial to make investments in cybersecurity a high precedence,” the report said.
Mitesh Rao, founder and CEO of OMNY Health, notes the safety steps healthcare organizations ought to soak up 2025 following the large healthcare knowledge breaches that occurred in healthcare in 2024, notably with Change Healthcare.
“Extra corporations must implement checks and balances on their very own operations to stop leaks and cyberattacks,” Rao says in an e-mail interview. “Past that, knowledge suppliers must vet their knowledge sharing insurance policies to guarantee that sufferers’ data doesn’t finish within the unsuitable arms.”
As AI fashions are used extra extensively and well being knowledge will get unfold throughout diagnostic and monetary data in addition to a number of kinds of platforms — together with native gadgets, cell, servers and cloud companies — IT leaders might want to forestall threat of safety breaches, Lenovo’s Stevens suggests.
“If not managed appropriately, AI workflows threat introducing unanticipated safety breaches because of a scarcity of end-to-end safety preserving knowledge safe throughout all sources, from a person’s PC to the cloud,” Stevens says.
Tackling Regulatory Compliance
With the give attention to GenAI, healthcare organizations should guarantee they perceive rules round compliance in 2025, IDC’s FutureScape report famous.
For 2025, Atropos Well being’s Hyde advises that well being IT leaders construct frameworks that set up belief whereas adhering to regulatory requirements on the identical time. These frameworks will rely on the dimensions of the healthcare group, he says.
“Bigger well being techniques and expertise corporations with strong sources might prioritize constructing their very own frameworks tailor-made to their particular wants, guaranteeing alignment with their inside workflows, affected person populations, and operational objectives,” Hyde says. “Nonetheless, the bulk are anticipated to depend on or carefully align with rising regulatory frameworks and requirements.”
Prioritize Cyber Resilience
In 2025, well being IT leaders ought to preserve cyber resilience in thoughts to remain ready for cybersecurity incidents earlier than they happen, advises Ty Greenhalgh, trade principal of healthcare at cybersecurity agency Claroty. Greenhalgh can be an envoy for the US Division of Well being and Human Companies 405(d) Activity Power and a member of the HHS Healthcare Sector Council Cyber Working Group.
Well being IT leaders ought to depend on the NIST definition of resilience to anticipate, survive, and get better from cybersecurity threats, in response to Greenhalgh.
“By leveraging the NIST definition of resilience, organizations can anticipate, stand up to, adapt, and get better from threats,” Greenhalgh tells us through e-mail. “This strategy emphasizes early detection and mitigation to cut back downtime and monetary affect, notably within the face of persistent threats like ransomware.”
