Part IV in the Big Picture Predictions and Perspectives Blog Series
In my last post I covered a number of very important subjects that successful HIM leaders will need to master on their transition from paper to digital native medical records. Once records have been digitized, though, HIM leaders see their responsibilities grow to include:
Preventive care based on predictive analytics. With the right digital data, advanced scoring and predictive analytics can be used to encourage early screening based on more than a patient's gender or age alone. When even more data is available, analytics can show how to care for patients based on co-morbidities and other scoring capabilities as patients arrive for care. For example, if someone arrives for care in an emergency setting and has been flagged as a CHF patient, then that patient can be scored for special types of care and specific workflows can be generated that would relate to the known diagnosis.
Population health outcomes improvement. PopHealth is something that has been talked about for decades but real population health only becomes possible as digital native data is available longitudinally across time and in depth with different kinds of phenotypic, genotypic, imaging, diagnostics, and other information that can be automatically processed without human oversight. Without longitudinal data on large enough cohorts and cross sections of populations, we HIM leaders cannot yield predictive and preventive recommendations.
Care coordination and care gaps elimination. Many thousands of patients die each year because of gaps in care, errors, and improper coordination of care. To eliminate gaps and improve coordination, interoperable data must be available across the care continuum quickly enough to be useful to patients as they move from one care facility to another. Until medical records are detailed enough and managed natively, the long term goal of saving lives through proper immunization, improving medication adherence, automatically flagging co-morbidities, analyzing imaging data, and seeing trends remains difficult.
Patient engagement. For many years the industry has been working to design a patient and family centric healthcare system by engaging patients. But, we've been trying to succeed in the 21st century with 20th century technology, like phones. With digital native records, engagement becomes easier through telemedical visits, SMS, e-mail, mobile apps, and remote diagnostics. When interoperable patient registries, digital histories, medication lists, and family outreach become routine real engagement will happen without actually having to do anything special. Patient engagement, when accomplished digitally, is an emergent property of the healthcare system and not a feature or function of a system.
As a HIM leader, once you see how your responsibilities will change, you can start mastering these aspects of digital records (data) to help achieve the initiatives listed above:
Confidential information handling and privacy rules. The more digital our records get, the easier it is to send them around, and the more likely it is that data that was once private might become public. As a HIM professional you should become the biggest advocate for patient privacy rights and help ensure that records stay closed to prying eyes.
Business rules and alerts. Consider putting in BPM (business process management), BAM (business activity monitoring), and rules engines on top of digital records to help generate alerts and improve workflow without requiring human intervention. If computer system can review digital records and only emit minimal data such as reports and alerts, privacy and security are both improved.
Data sharing and reciprocal arrangements. This is probably one of the thorniest issues that HIM professionals will have to deal with in the coming months and years. Who owns the source data? Who owns enriched data? Which organizational divisions inside the enterprise can see certain aspects of data? Which partner organizations outside the enterprise can share data? These are just some of the simpler questions around data sharing and reciprocal agreements that need to be considered and established as quickly as possible. If you go digital native and the wrong agreements are in place, then you may not have access to very important parts of data.
Archiving, backups, and business continuity. Once paper records are gone, how will you operate in environments when the digital environment is performing slowly or is gone altogether? The HIM professional will be responsible for having backup plans, establishing archiving rules, and allowing for the continuity of business when systems are down.
Successful HIM professionals of the future will look very different from their historical counterparts. The transition from paper digital native is not going to be simple, but it will allow for much more effective care and improved patient outcomes.
Join our Twitter Chat: Healthcare IG Predictions & Perspectives
On January 28th at 12:00 pm Eastern, @IronMtnHealth is hosting a Twitter chat using #InfoTalk to further the dialog. If you have been involved in governance-related projects, we'd love to have you join. What IG initiatives have shown success for you? How have you overcome any obstacles? What do you see as the future of IG? Keep the conversation going during our Healthcare IG Predictions & Perspectives #InfoTalk at 12pm Eastern on January 28th.
Hear more voices from the thought leaders of the healthcare industry by reading the rest of the blogs in this series: Big Picture Predictions and Perspectives.
Most recent headlines
09/11/2025
Dalet today announced a transformative leap forward for media operations: Agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI) that unifies the Dalet ecosystem under one natura...
20/10/2025
Inside TAMS: How Time-Addressable Media Stores could redefine sports workflows By Paul Markham
Friday, October 17, 2025 - 08:57
Print This Story
A penalty...
20/10/2025
Transformational production: Inside TVN's remote production push for the DFL...
20/10/2025
How NBC Sports Transitioned Stamford Facility to One Format: 1080p HDRMulti-year plan harmonizes workflows, simplifies operationsBy Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial ...
20/10/2025
NBA on NBC' Studio Production Team Is Ready for Tip-Off With Coast-to-Coast...
20/10/2025
Under pressure: TVN CEO Markus Osthaus considers the German sports broadcasting ...
20/10/2025
(L-R) Maria Dizzia, Carmen Emmi, and Russell Tovey attend the Plainclothes pre...
20/10/2025
In March, we launched Concerts Near You to help listeners find concerts from their favorite artists. Since then, more than 3 million people have used it to disc...
20/10/2025
Em diversas cidades do Brasil, um movimento tem se fortalecido para celebrar o poder, a beleza e a profundidade da criatividade negra. O Dia AMPLIFIKA, agora em...
20/10/2025
In cities across Brazil, a movement is growing that celebrates the power, beauty, and depth of Black creativity. AMPLIFIKA Day, now in its fifth edition, return...
20/10/2025
Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft rendering...
20/10/2025
DENVER and MUNICH Imagine Communications today announced its plans to acquire Pixel Power Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Rohde & Schwarz. Financial terms of...
20/10/2025
LOS ANGELES G Morgan has joined Globecast, a provider of broadcast, media and entertainment managed services, as executive vice president of sales, Globecast Am...
20/10/2025
PLYMOUTH, Wisc. Heartland Video Systems and Zixi have partnered to enable broadcast-quality live video delivery over any IP network....
20/10/2025
A. R. Rahman on Facing Fear and Finding the Divine In an interview with Berklee President Jim Lucchese, the Oscar-winning composer reflects on how courage and...
20/10/2025
Monday 20 October 2025
To view this content, please enable our use of cookies. ...
20/10/2025
Rohde & Schwarz transfers Pixel Power to Imagine Communications Companies work collaboratively to ensure continuity and ongoing support for existing customers...
20/10/2025
RT 's Prime Time is set to host the final Presidential Election Debate this Tuesday night, October 21, providing an opportunity to hear directly from Irelan...
20/10/2025
NVIDIA and Google Cloud are expanding access to accelerated computing to transform the full spectrum of enterprise workloads, from visual computing to agentic a...
19/10/2025
Back to All News
Sins of Kujo' Comes to Life in New Live-Action Series Set for Spring 2026
Entertainment
19 October 2025
GlobalJapan
Link copied to cl...
18/10/2025
New England Sports Network (NESN) has chosen Harmonic, working with Astound Business Solutions, as its enterprise technology partner to transform primary distri...
18/10/2025
NEW ORLEANS, La. In the run-up to the start of the NBA season, WVUE-TV and Gray Local Media have announced a deal with DirecTV that will greatly expand access t...
18/10/2025
Berklee Celebrates 40 Years of the Fall Together Concert Faculty composers Bob Pilkington and Greg Hopkins are among the featured artists for this year's ...
17/10/2025
NEP Group Receives New Equity Investment From 26North Partners LP, Co-InvestorsCarlyle remains the largest shareholder as the company prepares for the futureBy ...
17/10/2025
Apple Lands Five-Year Deal for F1 Distribution in the U.S.Besides airing on Apple TV, the sport will be amplified on other Apple servicesBy Ken Kerschbaumer, Ed...
17/10/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Marshall Electronics' Bernie Keach on the Future of PTZ Camera...
17/10/2025
L2 Productions' REMI Facility in Austin Can Produce Content From AnywhereMusic festivals, sports events are produced via flypacks and remote control roomsBy...
17/10/2025
By Lucy Spicer
One of the most exciting things about the Sundance Film Festival...
17/10/2025
(L-R) Christopher Meyer, Addison Timlin, Cooper Raiff, Lili Reinhart, Alyah Chan...
17/10/2025
M sica e arte se uniram em uma noite especial na semana passada na ZIV Gallery, ...
17/10/2025
Music and art came together for one special night last week at ZIV Gallery, an i...
17/10/2025
Spotify and FC Barcelona are extending our partnership through 2030, continuing a collaboration that's redefining how fans, players, and artists connect. Th...
17/10/2025
MURRIETA, Calif. The Sports Fishing Championship (SFC) has deployed DigitalGlue's creative.space storage platform to streamline video production by centrali...
17/10/2025
BELLEVUE, Wash. Football continued to cement its reputation as a bulwark of TV advertising in Q3 2025 with new data from iSpot that showed both the NFL and coll...
17/10/2025
The Sports Fishing Championship (SFC), the premier competitive saltwater fishing series, has transformed its production workflow by adopting creative.space, the...
17/10/2025
QuickLink, a leading provider of award-winning multi-camera video productions and remote contribution solutions, announces the release of StudioPro Version 4, ...
17/10/2025
Although the annual Grammy Awards celebration is best known for recognizing achievements in the recording industry, the show often proves a visual spectacle as ...
17/10/2025
OpenDrives, Inc., a leading provider of software-defined data storage and data services, has promoted Alex Dunfey to Chief Technology Officer (CTO) from his for...
17/10/2025
The University of Arizona (UofA) has significantly upgraded its broadcast communication infrastructure with the integration of Riedel Communications' advanc...
17/10/2025
Harmonic (NASDAQ: HLIT) today announced that New England Sports Network (NESN), owned by Fenway Sports Group and Delaware North, has selected Harmonic as its en...
17/10/2025
Austin PBS has recently upgraded its facility-wide communications infrastructure, deploying Clear-Com 's Eclipse HX, FreeSpeak II beltpacks, and V-Series ...
17/10/2025
ZEISS announces an open call for the closed BETA testing phase of CinCraft Virtual Lens Technology, the innovative digital tool that brings authentic lens chara...
17/10/2025
Situated in the town of Kokkola, Centria University of Applied Sciences offers higher education across five core fields: engineering, business, social and healt...
17/10/2025
Public information channel in Georgia, USA, to implement a powerful, simple, and cost-effective playout automation platform.
Pebble, the leading automation, co...
17/10/2025
HBO Max is reporting that it has launched in 15 new markets, including Bangladesh, Cambodia, Macau, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Ukraine, boosting the streaming serv...
17/10/2025
Netflix said it will make a major push into video podcasts, inking a wide-ranging deal with Spotify through which it will offer 16 podcasts in the U.S. starting...
17/10/2025
Lexington, Ky. As part of a push to highlight its advanced advertising capabilities, Viamedia has launched a new AI-powered ad tech platform and officially rebr...
17/10/2025
NEW YORK QuickLink has announced the release of StudioPro Version 4, which the company is calling the most significant upgrade yet to its flagship video product...
17/10/2025
NEW YORK and CUPERTINO, Calif. Apple and NBCUniversal said they will sell Apple TV and Peacock streaming bundles to U.S. subscribers starting Oct. 20....
Part IV in the Big Picture Predictions and Perspectives Blog Series
