Forrester is out with its top ten healthcare predictions for 2004. In order, they are:
1. Pharmaceutical companies will downsize.
2. More U.S. health plans will outsource claims processing, and it goes offshore.
3. Revenue derived from Electronic Medical Records (EMR) will surge past that from Practice Management Systems (PMS).
4. Pharmaceutical firms will begin providing product detailing via the Internet to nurse practitioners and physician assistants.
5. Enrollment in consumer-directed health plans will double.
6. Proscape will see a fourfold increase in use of its tablet PCs by pharmaceutical salespeople.
7. One-sixth of all U.S. households will purchase prescription drugs online.
8. Health plans will implement natural language search tools on their websites making it far easier for the average Joe and Joan to use them.
9. Health plans will take advantage of real-time copay connections to help manage individual patient care by providing real-time treatment recomendations based on patient records.
10. The growth in Electronic Data Capture (EDC) for clinical trials will slow to a trickle as skeptical managers await results of early adopters before committing.
This post is adapted from one that originally appeared on Small Business Trends.
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