The year 2012 was the year when data showed its muscle, whether in the presidential elections or in demonstrating how deeply entrenched the adoption and meaningful use of electronic health records had become.

The federal incentive program for adoption of electronic health records is on the verge of driving a growth spike in patient portals, as meaningful use stage 2 requires that physicians engage with their patients and share more information.

As healthcare CIOs across the country consider the year ahead, they seem optimistic that 2013 will end with significant progress on many fronts - putting the patient at the center of care, making the switch to ICD-10 smoothly, achieving interoperability, finding clarity - and world peace.

Medicare and Medicaid electronic health record (EHR) incentive payments are estimated to have reached $9.245 billion to 177,100 physicians and hospitals through November since the program's inception and are anticipated to reach $10 billion by the end of the year (Healthcare IT News went to press before the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) posted final figures in late December).

Healthcare in the United States and many other parts of the world has slowly been progressing through three waves of computerization and data management - data collection, data sharing, and data analytics. So far, however, the data collection and sharing waves, characterized by the urgent deployment of electronic health records and health information exchanges, have failed to significantly impact the quality and cost of healthcare, even when the focus and will to improve healthcare existed.