New survey highlights digital health challenges

As health system leaders look ahead to the challenges and opportunities of the coming year, they are increasing their spending to defend against cyberattacks, expressing optimism about reimbursement for telehealth services, and feeling anxiety about Apple, Amazon, and Google entering the healthcare space.

Those were among the key findings from a new survey, “Top of Mind for Top Health Systems 2019,” focusing on cybersecurity, telehealth and interoperability. The findings are based on quantitative and qualitative surveys of C-suite executives at nearly 40 U.S. health systems.

Released by the Center for Connected Medicine (CCM), in partnership with The Health Management Academy, key findings include:

• Hackers and other cybercriminals are stepping up their attacks on the healthcare industry, leading 87% of respondents to say they expect to increase spending on cybersecurity in 2019; no health system was expecting to decrease spending.
• Health information technology (IT) leaders overwhelmingly expect government and commercial reimbursement to provide the majority of funding for telehealth services by 2022; internal funding and patient payments are expected to provide the majority of funding for telehealth in 2019.
• 70% of responding executives said they were “somewhat concerned” about big tech companies, such as Apple, Amazon, and Google, disrupting the healthcare market; 10% were “very concerned.”

Newswise has the full release