Digitizing Medical Records
April 24, 2009
Business Week’s “The Mad Dash to Digitize Medical Records” here by Chad Terhune, et al is interesting. The business publication points to the money that the Obama administration will attempt to make available for “health” gets pride of place in the article. The reporters then leave the money to summarize some of the challenges digitizing things medical face, what Business Week calls “red flags”. There’s a nod to “pharmacy errors”, issues with correcting problems, and product testing. In short, the article gathers up issues and provides quotes to make the point that digitizing medical records is going to be exciting.
Let’s step back. Digitizing any data is challenging and fraught with problems. The medical information wagon train is beginning to roll because:
- Information processes cost a great deal of money
- The giants of technology are on the trail of a big thing; for example, Google, Microsoft, Siemens, and others from insurance, hospital holding companies, and Tom the plumber who can program in perl
- There is Obama money.
What’s the future look like? I think medical information in general and patient records in particular will be in a state of confusion for quite a while. The fact that big companies are signing up partners and moving forward with individual agendas dictating the actions guarantees challenges.
At some point, the options begin to coalesce, not because of a single reason but that’s the way online information works. Many different activities and then a hybridization that leaves us with two or three ways to achieve an outcome. Microsoft has demonstrated this hybridization with its dominance of the desktop. Google has demonstrated its hybridization in Web search.
Medical information will be a bit different because people can die. So the stakes become quite a bit higher from the outset than those stakes were when MS DOS was rolled out or when Google indexed public Web sites and made the index available without charge to anyone with an Internet hook up.
The story of medical records, medical information, evidence based medicine, and related informatics issues makes this a big deal. Did I mention the government? Lots of regulations. Did I mention national self interest? Some nations are definitely into medical information. Did I mention the money? There’s a lot of money in health and medical plays. Business Week explains the problems, and I suppose the regulations, the interests of certain nations, and money are self evident truths. Game changing interaction on the horizon is my take on this subject.
Stephen Arnold, April 24, 2009
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