The end of the year can only mean one thing: it's time to take step back and assess the state of things. HealthCare Business News went around the healthcare industry to find out what industry leaders had to say about the lessons from 2021 and what we can expect in 2022. Here are some of the responses we received.

We may look back on 2021 as the year interoperability finally turned the corner. With the 2016 21st Century Cures Act and the resulting 2020 ONC and CMS Interoperability Rules pointing the way toward FHIR standards-based interoperability, we are seeing a national consensus that patients should have access to their medical data on our smart phones and via FHIR. Active FHIR accelerators programs such as the CARIN Alliance, the Da Vinci Project and Gravity Project are expanding the scale and scope of FHIR enhancing the core work of HL7 in bringing these standards to life.

2022 will see rich work continuing the evolution of FHIR’s scale as cloud computing software stacks provide new ways to convert data from legacy provider and payer data stores into FHIR resources allowing APIs to fuel better ways to engage and serve patients wherever they seek care. These tools include new ways to provide privacy and security in a consumer-friendly way. The Bulk FHIR spec is on track to finally move us from today’s narrow measures of clinical value to a true learning health system informed by the same types of interoperable “Big Data” analytics tools that have provided vast value to consumers in the rest of the economy. This has been a long time coming.
- Don Rucker, MD, chief strategy officer for 1upHealth

We can safely say that 2021 was the year DNA sequencing for diagnosing and treating disease truly became mainstream. By the time the Omicron variant was detected late in the year, terms such as “PCR test” had entered common parlance – clear evidence that both healthcare professionals and the general population understand the role that genetics plays in combatting the COVID-19 virus. Very quickly, those at the forefront of healthcare innovation recognized how important it is to apply next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies to a wide range of diseases and conditions.

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