A New Model for Health Care

Accenture?s Institute for Health & Public Service Value reports that forthcoming changes will alter the face of health care more than at any time in the past. The spread of medical technology into the home?through the use of monitors, devices, the Internet and smartphones?promises to unleash entirely new ways of treating patients and conducting business.

SEE RELATED STORY: Innovation: A Healthy Tech Future

?Connected health? will force IT departments to rethink traditional technologies and security. The ability to incorporate remote diagnostics, telemedicine and home health care will likely determine which organizations flourish and which flounder. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, personalized medicine, which targets individual care based on personal and genetic variations, will grow from $232 billion in 2009 to $452 billion by 2015.

For IT, this means building more robust networks, using cloud computing, and ratcheting up technologies such as Web 2.0, service-oriented architecture and software as a service.