In late January, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) announced the availability of a new report, "2019 Healthcare Trends Forecast: The Beginning of a Consumer-Driven Reformation." The paper features commentary and analysis from leaders across HIMSS, Healthbox, Health 2.0 and PCHAlliance, each of whom have a bird’s-eye view of industry trends and the levers of change.

HIMSS said it hopes the inaugural report will equip industry leaders — including clinicians, solution providers, payers, academics and policymakers alike — "with insight and perspectives to inform better clinical and financial outcomes for all." The report is organized around four key trends: digital health implications and applications, consumer impact, financial and demographic challenges, and issues of data governance and policy.

Forecast from the report include:

Digital health innovators will need to demonstrate greater tangible results. Digital health tools have been riding the peak of the hype cycle for several years now, but 2019 will be the year that digital health will need to answer for the way technology will increase access to care and narrow gaps in care and coverage.

Consumer pressure will accelerate global reformation, value-based care. Consumer demand for greater access to personalized and patient-centered care will increasingly favor those offering convenience, choice and, most importantly, cost transparency.

Financial and demographic challenges will inspire new methods of care delivery. In 2018, it became clear traditional healthcare alone won't bend the cost curve, and social determinants of health must be at the forefront of care. In 2019, companies focusing on the social determinants of health and how to integrate mechanisms for providers to play a bigger role in triage, data-driven care, continuity of care and personalized action plans will find a more receptive environment.

Escalating data debates will drive policy changes. In 2019, privacy and security will be top of mind, with policymakers looking to the private sector and their policy counterparts in other countries to figure out what policy changes need to be put into place to protect information sharing.

"Consumer pressure is driving a disruptive technology-enabled shift in healthcare today," said Hal Wolf, HIMSS president and CEO, in a statement about the report. "Digital health technologies are beginning to deliver on their promise to help providers understand individual consumer preferences and provide personalized care that effectively coordinates care throughout the broader health ecosystem. By fully realizing the potential of information and technology, we can create an ever-increasingly informed and empowered global community of innovators, care providers, and patients."

"Digital health tools have been riding the peak of the hype cycle for several years now," the report points out, "but 2019 will be the year that digital health will need to answer for the way technology will increase access to care and narrow gaps in care and coverage."

Per HealthLeaders, HIMSS predicts eight takeaways from the report related to digital innovation, including a breakdown in government barriers hurting innovation, and policy change might enhance speed to market for new ideas. For example, HIMSS predicts a more aggressive stance by policymakers to speed to market tools that increase patient access, improve healthcare efficiencies, decrease provider burden, and create new pathways for care delivery that don’t require hospital stays.

Artificial intelligence will likely see an application for population health. Machine learning may be used to improve identification of at-risk individuals as well as delivery of personalized (precision) treatments.

Additionally, digital therapeutics usage is expected to rise as an adjunct to treatment to enhance medication adherence and "as an alternative to traditional treatments, such as diabetes prevention programs and other models related to preventing or mitigating the impact of chronic conditions."

Virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR) will become more mainstream for pain control after surgery and as an adjunct for chronic pain control, and we’ll likely experience solutions to ease the burden on clinicians, including an expansion of uses for voice recognition and intelligent assistants.

Chronic disease detection and management will benefit from wearables and implantable health devices that also will monitor the effectiveness of treatment, and finally, the blockchain gets real. The authors predict that distributed ledger technology (DLT) will be "leveraged as a part of the broader interoperability ‘toolbox’ to remove the redundancy and friction points that currently exist within the system, utilized to start conversations and explore new business opportunities with stakeholders who have not been able to ‘talk’ to each other due to misaligned incentives and technological infrastructure."