Doctors and hospitals often exist in a universe parallel to the consumers, patients, and caregivers they serve, a prominent chief medical information officer told me last week. In one world, clinicians and health care providers continue to implement the electronic health records systems they’ve adopted over the past several years, respond to financial incentives for meaningful use, and re-engineer workflows to manage the business of health care under constrained reimbursement.

In the other world, people — patients, healthy consumers, newly insured folks, kids, and caregivers — are seeking convenient, pleasant, frictionless experiences from the health system. Demands from these people are pushing the health system to transform in ways that serve them the way Uber, Amazon, Nordstrom, and Apple do. In a nutshell: As people pay more out of pocket, due to growing penetration of high-deductible health plans and bigger out-of-pocket copayments, patients are morphing into healthcare consumers and as such expect care to feel and act like other retail channels they patronize.

Here, I’ve identified ten 2015 trends I foresee rising out of these new financial and clinical pressures, combined with the drive to meet people where they live, work, play, and learn.

Consumer-directed care. Deductibles (both from exchanges and from company-issued plans) are getting so high, they’re starting to feel like real money. And this is prompting consumer-like shopping behavior for services, particularly since they can vary so much in cost.

Word-of-mouth for doctor-shopping goes online. A 2014 survey from Software Advice found that 25 percent of people now use online reviews, growing by 68 percent since 2013. Pair this with health care and you can see the shifting landscape.

DIY. Consumer self-service — such as online scheduling — in health care could save $3.2 billion for U.S. providers, data shows. This kind of appointment booking by both saves physicians time and generates revenue as open spots and last-minute cancellations are filled.

Consumer wearables. Over half of consumers say they intend to buy one in 2015, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, and two-thirds say they would use one if given to them by an employer. In the era of high-deductible plans, this could be a cost-saving tool for consumers and employers alike, as wearables drive prevention and promote wellness. Provided, that is, people actually follow through and use them.

Health-to-medical apps. Increasingly, doctors will be “prescribing” health apps. Early generation “app pharmacies” are starting to crop up, as well as bundled apps and tracking products (think Birchbox for health care).

Telehealth. In 2015, Medicare will start covering certain remote visits, and late this year, a new CMS reimbursement for doctors who see patients remotely was implemented.

Social and consumer-generated data. Late last year, the Institute of Medicine recommended that electronic health records accept data generated by consumers themselves. Capturing information about what people do day-to-day will help providers better manage population health.

The dark side of consumer health data. I dove deep into this growing phenomenon in a paper, titled, “Here’s Looking At You: How Personal Health Information Is Getting Tracked and Used,” that was published by the California HealthCare Foundation.
Consumers and health privacy: The frequency of data breaches in health care is expected to grow in frequency in 2015, according to the Experian 2015 Data Breach Industry Forecast.

Trust and doctors. Consumers continue to place a high level of trust in physicians, data shows. In light of the above trends, there’s an opportunity for physicians to reinforce these strong bonds by providing user-friendly, tech-aware care and convenience. Let’s bring medicine’s universes closer together — through 2015 and beyond.

Jane Sarasohn-Kahn is a health economist who blogs at Health Populi.  This article originally appeared in The Doctor Blog.