Technology Trends in Healthcare IT

Summer is a good time to assess the existing trends and project which ones will continue through the year. I would define the technology trends I see in Healthcare IT as “Mobile”, “Privacy”, and “Services”.

Within them I do include specific technologies that are today’s buzzwords.

• Mobile – portable Data, portable Applications, portable Profiles, portable Devices, portable Sensors, portable Sessions, portable Security-- mobile as a user experience – mHealth is the most used buzzword so far this year. 
• Developing Enabling Technology: REST, JSON, HTML5, WADO, FHIR
• Existing Enabling Technologies: CDA, HTML, PDF, IHE-XDM
• Privacy – Respect the individual, be Transparent with the individual, and Security of systems and data – privacy as a user experience – The Patient and Provider MUST trust that what they offer to Health IT will be maintained properly. Trust is easy to get the first time, very quick to lose, and almost impossible to recover from.
• Developing Enabling Technology: oAuth, Consent Rules, De-Identification
• Existing Enabling Technologies: Basic Consent, Audit Logs(ATNA), PKI, SAML, XACML, Encryption
• Services – Not necessarily as formal as SOA, but much like the SOA religion. Mostly services that enable HIE. Anything that could be a reusable service is "designed as" a service. Any service can be a local or remote or cloud hosted service. I think the concept of “Services” is more descriptive than “Cloud”, although to get best buzzword points "Cloud" mostly gets the point. 
• Developing Enabling Technology: REST, JSON, SimpleXML, oAuth
• Existing Enabling Technologies: XCA/XCPD, XDS, PIX/PDQ, Directory

Note that these three technology areas are overlapping and highly related. However they are on different tracks and require different development and maturing.

As always I have an indexed list of my articles by topic areas