Healthcare trends in 2015

Escalating costs and patchy quality
According to the World Healthcare Outlook of the Economist Intelligence Unit 2014, total global health spending is expected to grow at over 5% in 2015.
 
In Europe rising government debts, constraints on tax revenues, and aging populations will force health providers to make difficult choices about the provision of healthcare. Rising demand, and continued cost pressures will increase pressure on traditional healthcare business models and operating processes to change.
 
Despite the expected annual productivity and efficiency savings of some 4%, UK healthcare expenditure in 2015 is estimated to be about 10.3% of GDP. In the absence of changes to the delivery model, the UK's NHS funding gap is likely to increase significantly in 2015.
 
In their struggle to manage the escalating healthcare costs, health providers will accelerate their transition from volume to value. This will mean a greater emphasis on improving outcomes while lowering costs. This will drive payers to seek out global best practices of delivering affordable quality healthcare such as Narayana Health.

Access 
Improving access to healthcare will be one of the most pressing policy issues in 2015. Shortages of health professionals represent significant challenges in healthcare access, and healthcare systems will be pressed to recruit, and retain health professionals.The US is addressing this. US employment in healthcare increased from 8.7% of the civilian population in 1998 to 10.5% in 2008, and is projected to rise to 11.9% (nearly 20 million people) by 2018.
 
The UK is not in such a good position. In 2012 the UK had a shortage of 40,00 nurses, which it hasn't resolved. This is compounded by shortages GPs. Europe has an estimated shortage of some 230,00 doctors.
 
Increasingly, developed countries recruit health professionals from developing economies. The morality of this will be further questioned in 2015 as the policy significantly erodes the number and quality of healthcare professionals in emerging countries.
 
Changing technologies
The development of healthcare technologies has been rapid, and in some cases disruptive. Technologies such as telemedicine, electronic health records, mHealth, e-prescriptions, and predictive analytics have changed the way health providers, payers and patients interact, and contributed to improved quality of care, lower costs and improved outcomes. In 2015 expect the spend on healthcare technologies to slow.  
 
Security    
Reportedly, there is a growing and lucrative black-market for personally identifiable information, and personal healthcare information. Many healthcare organizations already have low security budgets, and only about 50% employ adequate encryption technologies to secure their endpoint data. Compared with other industries, healthcare experiences significant losses of endpoint healthcare data. Security challenges for the healthcare sector will accelerate in 2015.