These changes are going to be significant, and not only costly, but changes in the core business operation. So, how do you use data to model those things? Down the road, how do you get predictive – whether it’s genomics, as in, ‘I have a person that’s a member of a family that has a history of diabetes, and how do I start managing that population going forward?’ So, again, I think that’s what we want: Tell me what I can do to make sure I live a long healthy life and have the right outcomes, and how I can head off adverse events using the data that’s out there.

Stevenson: If you look at this from a health IT perspective, and you don’t look at it from a strictly healthcare perspective, what health IT needs to be aware of is a couple of things: you need to be aware of the fact that healthcare is changing and that the model of care is changing. They need to be focused on improving care for the patients, where traditionally health IT has been focused on improving quality for providers. So healthcare is moving toward more of a commodity-based model, kind of like the Wal-Marts of the world or the Amazons of the world. What we can do to differentiate ourselves, not only from a cost perspective, but from a quality-of-life perspective, is going to be very important for our patients. Health IT needs to figure out how we can support the practice to be better providers of care for the community. So an example of that in our instance is: we live in the world of an electronic medical record here. In IT, our core systems are our electronic medical records. How we can improve the experience in the electronic medical record for both our providers and our patients, as well as provide the predictive analytics is going to be core and critical to differentiating ourselves in the future. So I think what health entities need to be focusing on is how to differentiate themselves from other organizations in their area so they can improve the care of their patients and increase their market share.

Belmont: The other thing is we’ve got to stay way out in front of this – right now, we are playing catch-up, by the time we deliver what I’m working on, it’s going to change. So an example of that is, think about the world of ATM’s. So you can go anywhere in the world, and, with your ATM card, you can get cash. But the reality of it is, people are going cashless. So I could get really aggressive and build this really strong ATM network that pushes data out to everybody, and them I’m going to wake up and say, ‘well that was made for yesterday, and now what do I work on?’

So we’ve got to look down the road and get out in front of this, instead of continually playing catch-up. Retail is out in front of us as far as the predictive analytics piece; we’re not doing any of that. By the time we get there, there will be something new. So we’ve got to look at what else is happening in the IT industry and what other industries are doing that can compliment us. Because at the end of the day, we are an information-driven industry; even though you’re taking care of patients and you’re touching humans, it’s all about the information that you’re giving that physician, whether it’s him collecting it at the point of care, or us giving it to him proactively.