Thought Leadership
A Health IT Leader’s Wish List for 2025: Tech Equity and Health Equity
Thought LeadershipWhen we look back at 2025, I hope we’ll point to the gains technology helped make for equity this year.
Health IT leaders are beginning to recognize the impact that lack of tech equity has had on health equity, from access to care to care coordination and outcomes. More than half of healthcare IT leaders responding to a recent Consensus Cloud Solutions survey executed by CHIME say data-sharing challenges with small facilities that don’t have an EHR affect health equity. Without essential patient data, providers in underserved areas can’t make informed decisions. As a result, nearly half of providers use paper fax to send patient data to facilities that don’t have an EHR. Just as alarming: 42% say the impact has been significant. (Read our e-book on this topic.)
That’s why my wish list for 2025 is for advancements that make a difference for underserved populations, underrepresented groups in health tech leadership and under-utilized approaches to applying advanced tech in pragmatic ways.
Bridging the Digital Divide: There’s no shortage of work taking place to modernize healthcare’s data infrastructure, yet breakdowns in information exchange remain, and they affect care coordination and care quality. In 2025, I believe we’ll see a more intense focus on closing tech equity gaps to improve information exchange, especially with rural and post-acute facilities.
This is an area where AI is poised to make a substantial contribution. By applying AI to transform unstructured data into structured data, we could significantly reduce some of the biggest barriers to healthcare information exchange between the industry’s digital “haves” and “have nots.” Once data is structured it can then be consumed in a number of workflows that make the data relevant and quickly consumable.
Nearly 46% of health IT leaders surveyed believe applying AI to unstructured documents like faxes, PDFs, and handwritten notes could significantly ease this challenge by extracting this data into actionable intelligence. In fact, one out of three providers are already applying these solutions for this purpose.
Strengthening Information Exchange During a Disaster: Days after the new year began, wildfires ravaged the Los Angeles area, destroying facilities such as AltaMed Health Services Clinic in Pasadena, Calif., and forcing other clinics to close for safety reasons. When homes and businesses are evacuated or completely destroyed, power is out and computer systems are inaccessible, the ability to quickly and securely transmit data can be a matter of life or death. It ensures responders can share medical information. It also gives people access to communication with their providers in a HIPAA secure manner when they’ve been displaced from their homes.
By the time disaster strikes, it’s too late for care teams, first responders and relief organizations to start testing new technologies to bridge healthcare communication gaps. What’s needed: a pragmatic solution that ensures patient medical information can be accessed in the cloud through mobile devices even if on-site servers aren’t available.
At Consensus, we launched a free program for those impacted by natural disasters. Our eFax Protect solution is HIPAA secure with accessibility via a mobile device. Such a solution should be added to emergency responders, relief centers, shelters, and other support organizations’ communication toolkits. Such a tool is flexible, efficient, and secure.
With the increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters, we must do more to support the victims, many of whom face prolonged disruptions to their lives. As we progress into 2025, I think it’s evident that we need a solution like this. I hope this program is adopted by more organizations to offer a vital communication lifeline during these difficult times.
What’s on your health tech wish list for 2025? Please share your thoughts.
