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Doubts On Digital Health Records

The EMR gold rush is on. Leading the "there's gold in them thar hills..." contingent are IT vendors sensing myriad opportunities to do what IT vendors do - build, consult, integrate, interface and implement, growing revenues at every turn. Pay me! Pay me!

Next in line are health care providers, suspecting (rightfully, alas) that they'll be bribed to do what they should have done on their own 10 years ago. Pay me too! Pay me too!

Here, from the NY Times is a refreshing perspective:
In the (New England Journal of Medicine) article, identified as a “perspective,” Dr. Kenneth D. Mandl and Dr. Isaac S. Kohane portray the current health record suppliers as offering pre-Internet era software — costly and wedded to proprietary technology standards that make it difficult for customers to switch vendors and for outside programmers to make upgrades and improvements.

Instead of stimulating use of such software, they say, the government should be a rule-setting referee to encourage the development of an open software platform on which innovators could write electronic health record applications. As analogies, they point to other such software platforms — whether the Web or Apple’s iPhone software, which the company has opened to outside developers.
I'm sorry, but I don't trust the unholy trinity of government, IT vendors and health care providers to spend billions AND act in the best interest of health care consumers. Most of 'em would struggle to spell c-u-s-t-o-m-e-r if you spotted 'em six letters.

But open platforms? Innovation? Apple's iPhone as analogy? Now you're talking! Most other approaches are likely to mimic post-WWII Soviet architecture. Sure, they built apartment complexes, but the heat never worked.

More here from Physorg.com.



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