The Healthcare Trends Institute has released results of their Healthcare Benefits Technology Trends Survey, designed to examine how benefits decision makers are gauging current and future technology investments, via a 11-question poll of human resources (HR) executives, benefit specialists, and other benefit decision makers.

Here's the five key trends they shared from their report:

(1) Benefits Enrollment and HRIS leading Technologies: The majority of employers (78%) are using technology to manage their benefits by using benefit enrollment and HRIS systems.

(2) Employers are using implemented technology for a wide variety of uses: Provider directories (44.3%), Quality/Price info (29.1%), Communication (29.1%), and Healthcare Expense Tracking and Budgeting (27.8%) lead the types of functions for which respondents use technology.

(3) Communication is Highly Regarded: Among the top goals and expectations that employers hope to receive from improving technology are Communication (49.4%), Employee Satisfaction (43%), Efficiency (36.7%), Lower Costs (35.4%) and Compliance (35.4%)

(4) Employers Taking Comfort in the Cloud: Nearly two-thirds of employers (64.3%) are comfortable with using the cloud in benefits administration.

(5) Desktop Still the Leading Way to Access, but Smartphones on the Rise: Nearly three quarters of employees (72.9%) rely on desktop computers to access their benefits, followed by 52.9% accessing from home and 50% accessing benefits information via smartphone.