Political Focus on Healthcare Reform is Neither the Problem nor the Solution

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The importance of healthcare services combined with the sharply rising cost of its delivery helped to make healthcare an industry under intense political scrutiny. But just as U.S. national and state governments aim to incentivize modernization and cut costs with a raft of political action, the industry itself places the blame elsewhere. In a recent B2B technology survey of 50 U.S.-based healthcare companies, ABI Research finds that government incentives are the lowest primary driver, worse even, a barrier for technology adoption. There is far more concern about healthcare providers’ ability to win support internally for smart health initiatives.

“Our survey revealed that U.S. healthcare is clearly interested and investigating a range of emerging technologies, but significant concern regarding implementation stems not from regulatory demands but from complexity and institutional inertia,” says Jonathan Collins, Research Director at ABI Research. “Healthcare organizations face a raft of issues in adopting new technologies that stem from a lack of support and understanding both from within their organizations but also from technology suppliers.”

The survey also finds a key willingness to embrace developing technologies with 76% of healthcare respondents rating their organizations’ willingness to embrace technologies as a 7 or higher out of 10. This is notably higher than the 66% of respondents from nine verticals, reported in the same survey.

Technologies under consideration range from connected medical devices to renewable energy management, and a focus on improving patient services and operating efficiency drives this adoption. However, that potential for improvement through smart health adoption will remain unfulfilled if healthcare providers do not get the support they need from the IT industry.

“Our survey highlights a substantial market being held back because CTOs and their staff cannot win the kind of backing to support for their efforts,” concludes Collins. “While these organizations favor developing projects internally, they need telecom providers and systems integrators to provide the expertise and experience to not only deploy new technology but provide the use case and ROI details to win internal support for technology projects that will improve the cost and the quality of healthcare.”