At this year’s Medicaid Enterprise Systems Conference (MESC), state health department representatives and health IT experts from across the country converged this week in Denver to discuss the latest solutions and industry best practices in rising above the challenges of serving a diverse Medicaid population.

In an age when digital data created over the past two years exceeds the total amount of data ever created before, keynote speakers and panels shared optimism over the possibilities that lie ahead at the intersection of health care and technology.

Medicaid, long known primarily as a system of payments, today faces transformative opportunities. Rather than simply facilitating expenditures, mega-trends like big data, cloud computing and mobility services allow stakeholders to develop and experiment with new value add-ons.

Although they are large scale and technical in nature, these trends introduce very real benefits for Medicaid recipients. There are two key issue areas that technological advances in Medicaid directly address:

Are we using financial resources as effectively as possible?

Are people receiving the very best and personalized care available?

With more than seven million new Medicaid recipients this year alone, Medicaid systems are collecting a wealth of data points that can be used to drill deeper into these two key points of interest. Tools like CNSI’s HealthBeat, for example, allow state governments to conduct new forms of data analysis to uncover useful patterns within an operation. By providing an enterprise view of federal systems, health care stakeholders can track, predict ad prepare for future events that impact health care management. 

This new style of health care optimization looks to incorporate and make use of the free flowing data that is produced from our everyday activities. In fact, the latest technology encourages consumer engagement so that health care can be fine-tuned to recognize red flags and identify day-to-day activities that provide personalized insights into how individuals can best be served. 

Each person has different and dynamic needs. Never before have there been such opportunities to address those needs on this large a scale.  At MESC 2014,  we saw that the possibilities are endless.