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Numbers. It’s all in the numbers. As of 2017, the amount of information is growing much more rapidly than our understanding of what to do with it, or our ability to differentiate the useful information from the rest. On the other hand, the inflated health care costs in the U.S. are showing no clear signs of decline. So, we should be directing our focus towards smarter, data-driven solutions or more simply analytics, which will make the job of doctors a lot easier and manage the skyrocketing costs that come in the way of providing quality care to the population they serve. Digitized health information holds the potential to reduce treatment costs, avoid preventable diseases, and improve the quality of life in general. The sooner we optimize its utility, the better will be the care of the patients.

A patient’s expectation, whether in a city or an extremely remote area, from the doctors and hospital staff, is the same and it goes without saying that this recipient of health care services deserves to get what he/she needs; to be treated with best quality medicine, less time-consuming procedure and least costly treatment. Coupled with this, the one who is suffering wants the complete attention of the doctor, nurses and care team while being entitled to stay fully informed about his/her health condition. What this means is, the experience of care for any patient is of utmost importance.

I think it’s clear that over the last few years, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has been changing the way healthcare is being perceived and delivered in the U.S. From a system that worked on increasing revenue by increasing volume to a system that rewarded providers for improving quality of care, CMS has been instrumental in accelerating value-based care. However around a week ago, the future of value-based care stood at crossroads.

It is no secret that access to health care is a real challenge in rural parts of the world. While the urban landscape of the country now has the means to comfortably avail smooth access to public transportation, advanced medical care, and innovative preventive programs, the rural parts are lagging far behind in these aspects. As appalling as it sounds, the fact remains that 15% of Americans residing in rural parts do not have access to adequate health care. Narrowing down further we find that on average 46 million people living in the countryside are older, sicker, and have less access to medical care than those who live in urban areas, and the gap has widened in recent years.

Did you know one-third of all the patients never follow through their referrals? Or that most healthcare organizations lose about 30% to 60% patients on account of inefficient referrals? If by the year 2020, value-based care is expected to be the dominant payment model, no health system can afford losing more than half of their revenue to poor leakages and its ramifications.

A personal health record of any patient, whether it is an aging parent, a spouse or a child with a chronic illness, contains a summary of medications, lab results, visit notes, billing information and more, and interoperability makes it easy to manage all these files and documents with just a few clicks.