5. Data Analytics – Demand for analytic services and projects will increase in 2018. Data analysts are expected to be busy helping providers participate in new payment models and revenue initiatives like MACRA.

6. Informatics – In the coming year, informaticists will help to mitigate physician burnout with electronic health records (EHRs) by streamlining processes to capture data in EHRs, protect patient-generated data in mobile apps and develop interfaces and dashboards for telehealth services.


7. Information Governance – In 2018, enterprise-wide retention policies and data quality will continue to cause cybersecurity challenges for providers, demonstrating the strong need for information governance programs to address them.

8. Education and Workforce – Upskilling existing practitioners for more advanced roles in data analytics and informatics, preparing academic faculty to teach higher-level content in data analytics and revising curriculums to ensure students are prepared to meet workplace needs are all education and workplace trends anticipated in 2018 and beyond.


Also in this issue:

In order to better understand patient’s perceptions about online patient portals and viewing doctors’ notes, researchers from the University of Washington School of Medicine and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center conducted a study of patient doctors’ note access through an OpenNotes initiative.

The article, “Who Reads Their Doctor’s Notes? Examining the Association between Preconceptions and Accessing Online Clinical Notes,” discusses the findings of the 2011 study, which included more than 9,000 participants from three geographically diverse locations. Most notably, the study found 92 percent of survey participants accessed at least one doctor note during the study period, while 8 percent did not due to baseline concerns about privacy issues.

Read these articles and more in the January issue of the Journal of AHIMA or online at journal.ahima.org.


About AHIMA
The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) represents more than 103,000 health information professionals in the United States and around the world. AHIMA is committed to promoting and advocating for best practices and effective standards in health information and to actively contributing to the development and advancement of health information professionals worldwide. AHIMA is advancing informatics, data analytics, and information governance to achieve the goal of providing expertise to ensure trusted information for healthcare. www.ahima.org

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