About To HIT The Fan

Big change over the next few years for the healthcare system and its participants in no small part because of the rising power of the online patient advocate, the impending widespread adoption of health information technologies (HIT), and (of course) the power of social media.

The impact social media has had on all industries has been profound, but HIT and new regulation encouraging (or even mandating) its use is about to amplify this shift within the pharmaceutical industry in particular. For the first time, networked electronic medical records (EMR) will make patient-outcomes data available on a large scale. At stake is comparative data and real results, not proxies like surveys and self-reported patient data. Not only will health care professionals, managed care organizations, and countless other institutions finally have information on which to make data-driven decisions, but patients will have unparalleled access to their personal medical history, along with how their health and treatments compare to the mean. Combined with information available online and access to communities of peers with similar data, this new access will facilitate a sea-change in how medicine will be practiced and managed in the very near future.