Forrester's Top 10 Healthcare Predictions For 2006

Happy New Year! And what will this new year have in store for healthcare IT and the plans, providers, and drug firms using it? We've dusted off our crystal ball to bring you our top 10 predictions for 2006. Highlights include:

• Leading CDHPs will offer employers and members more integrated banking choices.

• Amid feverish activity, few new regional health information networks will come on line.

• eClinical portals will generate uptick in CTMS partnering and spending.

• Targeting the uninsured, health insurers and retailers will step up walk-in clinics.

• Slow RFID progress in pharma ePedigree applications.

• A weak showing for Medicare discount cards.

• Philips Medical's plans to catch Cerner and Siemens Medical Solutions.

• The spread of P4P rollout by health plans -- it was slower than we figured.

• Growth in health plan member site visitors -- less than we estimated.

• Who would buy whom in the HSA market -- lots of other activity to report nonetheless.

Exploiting Unstructured Information In Pharma

Few pharmaceutical manufacturers would disagree with the observation that they produce more documents than drugs. These caches of unstructured information will bring trouble to pharma if unstructured information management isn't a top priority. Seventeen out of 23 respondents from top pharma firms we talked with agree that information contained in unstructured text presents a growing legal/regulatory risk. Despite this, respondents report weak adherence to document retention policies at their companies. We recommend that pharma leverage information architecture to reduce the large risk from unstructured information, and we outline near-term goals to corral unstructured information.

Hot News For Health Plans

Fidelity Investments has tossed its hat into the ring of health savings accounts (HSAs). We've outlined three steps plans should take to make the most of Fidelity's entrance, including making personal healthcare finance tools more personal with health plan claims data.

Meanwhile, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association announced in early December that it will charter a bank -- Blue Healthcare Bank -- to service plan members' spending accounts. This is good news for smaller, regional Blues plans that will be able to offer similar levels of integrated service as the leaders in consumer-directed health.

On the customer experience front, should you implement live chat on member service sites? We don't think so. Our research shows that 38% of commercially insured consumers who have used online chat to communicate with their plan were dissatisfied with the experience. The better option? Click-to-callback.

The eDetailing Honorarium Debacle

Educating media-inundated physicians is increasingly a priority for pharma. Both Bristol-Meyers Squibb and Pfizer announced a voluntary moratorium on all direct-to-consumer marketing during the first year after product launch and a renewed effort to ensure that doctors are fully educated on their products. eDetailing is promising for this role but can become problematic when honoraria come into the picture. We've segmented physicians into two groups: Honorarium Seekers, those who will demand honoraria, and Information Seekers, those who are in it for the information. We've found drastically different attitudinal differences between Honorarium Seekers and Information Seekers, and we outline how to target this high-return segment.

Understanding Physicians' Tech Optimism

Since 1998, Forrester's Consumer Technographics® segmentation has helped predict how consumers adopt personal technology and behave online. Segmenting physicians between technology optimists and pessimists exposes large behavioral and attitudinal differences. Understanding these differences will help healthcare companies and drug marketers to improve sales and service efforts. To appeal to optimists, technology vendors should tout the time savings or convenience improvements that your products will bring -- instead of focusing on benefits like scalability or ease of implementation, for example.

We are very interested in your feedback on our research. Do you have topics to recommend, data you would like to have, or technologies you want assessed? Drop me a line at bradholmes@forrester.com so we can connect.


Brad Holmes
VP and Practice Leader,
Healthcare and Life Sciences

Research Referenced In This Issue Blue Healthcare Bank Bets On Service, Not Returns (38377) Employers' Disease Management Growth Plans (38039) Exploiting Unstructured Information In Pharma (36833) Fidelity's New Health Savings Accounts Challenge Health Plans' Customer Loyalty (38611) Forrester's Top 10 Healthcare Predictions For 2006 (37995) Health Plans Should Skip Online Chat (38418) Healthcare: Did Our Predictions Survive 2005? (38018) The eDetailing Honorarium Debacle (37675) Understanding Physicians' Tech Optimism (38019)

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