From my perspective, healthcare constituents will benefit from welcoming digitization and modernization with open arms in the year ahead. Investing in technologies that enhance the consumer experience is essential in an increasingly changing healthcare landscape where new entrants from non-traditional healthcare backgrounds are disrupting the market with their knowledge of the consumer. Offering digital tools and omnichannel communications to consumers will be crucial to ensure they are getting the personalized care they need based on their preferences and can also help them meet financial responsibilities. I believe that organizations will recognize the benefits of outsourcing technologies that enable targeted consumer outreach, digitize intake, and modernize processes overall.
- Venkatgiri Vandali, president of healthcare and lifesciences at Firstsource

2021 was a memorable year from the perspective of wrestling with solutions to combat COVID-19 while at the same time attempting to get back to a semblance of a normal life. Most of our attention was taken up finding ways to address mask mandates and vaccine deniers. We have to hope that in 2022 we can get back to the business of improving healthcare while acknowledging that we will have to continue to live with COVID-19.

These are some of my predictions for healthcare and health IT as we look ahead to 2022.Healthcare becomes more personalized and participatory with technology support facilitated through enhanced patient engagement tools, integrating patient-generated data into the medical record, and focusing on health equity and access to care. The Digital Front Door is an exciting recent development in the long evolution to a more patient-centric health system for which we anticipate increasing demand. Remote monitoring tools and applications have demonstrated value in safely managing many specific conditions, for example congestive heart failure. I believe we will see the use of remote monitoring to continue and expand in its adoption. Public health will be a priority as COVID-19 proved our public health infrastructure is weak and unprepared. There will continue to be concerns around well-described, long-standing issues such as provider burnout, workforce shortage, and complex, siloed IT systems. Planned improvements to increased interoperability across the country will help alleviate these issues.

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