CHIME Digital Health Most Wired Report Recap

Healthcare is not a static field. Methods of treatment and delivery are constantly evolving, to better serve the current needs of patients.  As healthcare evolves, so must the technology that enables providers to care for their patients in the most efficient and effective manner. Today, according to the CHIME Digital Health Most Wired Report (DHMW), healthcare leaders are leveraging technology to deliver care wherever the patient is, whether that is at home, at work, or on the go.

Gartner's CIO Agenda 2025 report listed “drive technology innovation” as an imperative for 2025, and it appears healthcare CIOs agree. Infrastructure has become a critical enabler of modern healthcare, and healthcare leaders are now viewing it as an essential element in their efforts to keep pace with technology and shifts in care delivery models. Their new outlook is that while providers deliver care, infrastructure can help deliver digital health capability. This enabling technological framework is the backbone of healthcare's digital transformation, ensuring secure, efficient and innovative care delivery.

CHIME’s 2024 Digital Health Most Wired (DHMW) survey found that healthcare providers increasingly recognize the importance of a dynamic, scalable and secure infrastructure to advance the goal of “care anywhere.” Three emerging trends are reshaping the role of infrastructure in healthcare: the shift to delivery of care driven by mobility and remote technologies, the evolution of the cloud as the new datacenter to enable scalability and efficiency, and the rise of identity as the new perimeter to secure decentralized ecosystems. 

The DHMW survey reveals that infrastructure is a higher priority for digital health transformation than at any point in the past three years, as 88% of providers called infrastructure an essential or high priority area, compared to 77% of providers in last year’s survey. 

“Healthcare organizations that prioritize infrastructure are better equipped to leverage technology for patient-centric care,” Toni Laracuente, Senior Director of Analytics for CHIME explains. “This includes the use of devices, telehealth, and other digital tools to enhance the patient experience and improve outcomes.”   

The report explores these key infrastructure segment findings — from an emphasis on patient engagement to meet healthcare consumerism demand, integration of patient wearables and patient-generated health data with electronic health records (EHRs), and to expanded BYOD (bring your own device) policies and more robust recovery capabilities. The survey results show how these benchmarks of digital health progress address healthcare providers’ need for scalable, secure and future-ready infrastructure solutions.

Delivery of care

The shift has begun from hospital-centric "care delivery” to consumer-centric "delivery of care” — more home-based, personalized, and virtual care. This is being enabled by telehealth and remote patient monitoring. Increasingly, patient wearables are playing a role in this evolution, offering strong future potential for remote monitoring and patient engagement. This evolution demands agility and responsiveness, requiring a flexible and scalable infrastructure.

As the survey reports, mid-sized healthcare organizations (251 to 1,000 beds) are most likely to prioritize infrastructure investment. The results show that 91% of mid-sized providers, compared to 87% of large (more than 1,000 beds), and 84% of small providers (250 beds or fewer) are making significant investments in infrastructure.

Patient-generated health data

Today's healthcare consumers expect providers to collect and use Patient Reported Experience Measures (PREM) and Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs). A robust infrastructure is essential for effectively collecting, analyzing, and utilizing this patient-generated data to improve care quality and patient satisfaction. This infrastructure must be able to support the integration of PREM and PROM data with electronic health records (EHR) and other healthcare data sources to create a holistic view of the patient.

The use of devices to support caregiver workflows and deliver patient care is on the rise. The 2024 survey shows a significant increase in the adoption of technologies such as mobile devices and mobile voice recognition for clinicians. These tools empower providers to deliver care remotely, access patient information in real-time, and facilitate communication and collaboration. 

Healthcare organizations (HCOs) are increasingly adopting hybrid and multi-cloud models to optimize their infrastructure for scalability, cost-efficiency, and data sharing. These approaches allow HCOs to leverage the strengths of different cloud providers while maintaining secure control over sensitive data and critical applications. This flexibility is critical for supporting care anywhere initiatives and accommodating the complexity of modern healthcare operations. 

Cybersecurity for decentralized healthcare 

Cloud adoption provides significant operational benefits, including reduced infrastructure costs, improved scalability to accommodate demand fluctuations, and enhanced interoperability across systems and departments. The adoption of mobile and remote technologies in healthcare has dissolved traditional network perimeters, making identity the cornerstone of modern security strategies.

In a decentralized ecosystem, where patients, clinicians, and staff access data from multiple locations and devices, verifying and authorizing user identities is essential to protecting sensitive systems. Access control policies and multi-factor authentication are being widely adopted, which is the result of a strong focus on verifying user identities before granting access to sensitive systems and data.

The 2024 DHMW survey underscores the critical role of infrastructure in digital health transformation. HCOs must prioritize investments in resilient, secure, and scalable infrastructure to meet the demands of delivery of care anywhere and ensure sustainable success in an ever-evolving healthcare landscape.

How Spectrum Business can help

We’ve partnered with more than 119,000 healthcare organizations to provide secure connectivity and communications solutions. With up to 100 Gbps, our nationwide fiber network ensures that large volumes of crucial medical data are available in real time and all locations stay connected, no matter how remote. Because we know that supporting your mission and providing patient-centric care means staying available and acting with urgency, we offer a comprehensive service-level agreement (SLA).

Come see us at ViVE 2025

ViVE 2025 is poised to be an unforgettable healthcare technology event. Taking place in Nashville, TN, February 16-19, 2025, ViVE will convene leaders in the digital healthcare space to discuss technology and business transformation of healthcare systems. Stop by the Spectrum Business booth #532 or schedule an on-site meeting with one of our healthcare IT specialists to find out why 80% of the largest health systems in the U.S. rely on Spectrum Business for technology solutions. 

About CHIME 

The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) is an executive organization dedicated to serving chief information officers (CIOs), chief medical information officers (CMIOs), chief nursing information officers (CNIOs), chief innovation officers (CIOs), chief digital officers (CDOs), and other senior healthcare IT leaders.