Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report – What It Means for Healthcare

If you’re not familiar with the famous Mary Meeker Internet Trends Report, then I’m glad to introduce it to you. It’s one of the most influential reports when it comes to what’s happening on the internet. The report is massive and covers a wide variety of topics. So, let’s check it out as a community and share the things that stand out to us and how these internet trends will impact healthcare.

The two trends that stood out to me were voice and personalization.

The graphs related to the quality of voice and the skills related to voice are astounding. It’s not that shocking to suggest that voice is the new interface. I see it first hand with my kids who are all about Alexa to get their questions answered. I’m increasingly doing it as well. Voice is going to change so many things including healthcare. It won’t be long before we’re asking Alexa (or choose your favorite voice app) to schedule an appointment, order a refill, or any number of healthcare related applications.

Along with the consumer voice applications, I also see voice entering the enterprise. In the next 5 years, I believe that exam rooms are going to be revolutionized by voice. The EHR interfaces that currently drive doctors nuts are going to be replaced by voice powered interfaces. It will take longer to fully spread, but we’re already starting to see this voice powered future.

The other trend that stood out for me was personalization. This is a scary trend for many people. However, that’s not true for the next generation. In fact, the fact that healthcare is not personalized is shocking. Not only does personalization not scare the next generation, it’s an expectation. Chew on what that means for the future of healthcare. That’s a massive sea change.

The great thing with personalization is that the data is now available to personalize the experience. We just haven’t seen the applications implemented in healthcare yet. It’s starting to happen though and a couple years from now it will increasingly be a requirement for modern healthcare providers.

Those are two trends that stood out to me. Take a look through the report and let us know what surprised you in the comments of this post or on Twitter with @HealthcareScene.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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