October 29, 20210 (New Orleans, Louisiana) — The future of healthcare delivery will veer away from "the patient and clinician in an exam room," and morph into a scenario revolving around multifaceted information technology (IT) that is highly interoperable, interconnected, and instantaneous, according to William Crounse, MD, senior director of Worldwide Health for Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Washington.
Dr. Crounse was an invited lecturer at the Medical Group Management Association 2010 Annual Conference. His presentation was entitled How Software and the Net are Transforming Health and Healthcare Delivery.
He envisions a future in which much of the daily grind of healthcare delivery occurs online and on mobile devices such as smart phones, using simple and interactive systems. In the next-generation delivery of healthcare, he said, "the importance of user-interfacing cannot be underestimated. It will be a 3-D IT environment."
The evolution of "cloud computing" will help this to advance, he said. Currently, health information resides in "fragmented silos," but cloud computing will allow for shared resources, software, and information on demand, like an electricity grid. Personal computers "will tap into the cloud. All the computation will be done in a data center far away that can scale from 2 people to 2 million people."
Trends in E-Healthcare Services
Already, many services once provided at the physician's office or over the telephone are being shifted to the Internet: online appointment booking; Web messaging with physician and staff; access to lab and radiology reports, prescription refills, reminders, and "information therapy"; access to personal medical records, outcomes, and disease management tools; and the management of insurance benefits.
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