Over the years, a lot of my consulting work has been in pharmaceutical and medical devices industries. That experience has been augmented over the last few months through my work with a major integrated health care, biomedical research, and medical education institution. Through these experiences I have become fascinated with the potential for IT to help revolutionize health care in the US.
As a result, I have been closely monitoring this space, and was intrigued by Wal-Mart’s announcement of its plans to market a digital health records system. For the uninitiated, companies such as Microsoft and Google, plus a host of other players have offerings (or intentions) in this space, and President Obama’s stimulus package offers $17 billion for incentive payments over five years for doctors and hospitals to adopt EHRs.
Medical Records in the Cloud
As my readers will already know, I’m a proponent of contemporary Web 2.0 means of delivering IT capability – at least for certain situations, and it’s interesting to note that Wal-Mart’s plans are based on both Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Cloud Computing underpinnings.
With my interest in IT enablement of health care, among the blogs I track is one penned by John D. Halamka, MD, MS. John’s many roles include CIO of CareGroup Health System and Harvard Medical School, as well as being a practicing Emergency Physician. He has just posted on the Wal-Mart entry into this market, with some interesting commentary on the cost structure and Wal-Mart’s qualifications for this business. His net take is generally a “thumbs up.”
I’m not sufficiently expert to try to predict how all this will work out, and there’s been ongoing heated debate about the cost and value of Electronic Medical Records. However, I’ve seen enough of the health care industry, both as a consultant, and as a consumer, to know without a shadow of doubt that it has hitherto been woefully under-served by IT. I strongly believe that while there will be twists and turns and glitches along the way, IT has the potential to take out significant costs, and improve the quality and outcomes of healthcare. With healthcare taking such a huge bite out of ever decreasing retirement savings, it’s hard to think of many things with higher priority.
(Image is a Phillips Wireless Medical Tablet PC)
Filed under: IT Management, Web 2.0 | Tagged: Cloud computing, electronic health records, electronic medical records, SaaS
[...] we will see similar moves in the heathcare industry. In fact, earlier this year I posted on The Wal-Martification of Healthcare IT and one particular initiative targeted at small physician groups. This may just be the beginning [...]