I had the pleasure to view screen shots of two different ambulatory care centers EHR/EMR systems yesterday. Both were very DOS text based and had no element of windows based technology or a visual graphic interface. Even hospitals in the adoption phase are using systems designed for the last century. This is the era of Facebook and Twitter. We have very tech savvy people who would never accept such inefficiency of antiquated systems in any other part of their life.

AS far as complete medical records access for the patient… bring it on! How do you think we got Google? The information came first and then we began to do amazing things with the aggregate of that data.

The hard road we have ahead is making our citizens aware of their trampled health care rights. Pointing out the the obvious in a Dilbert cartoon maybe a way to do it. This almost 2010 we need to implement systems in line with the times.

Many of you maybe aware I worked in a toy-store for 12 years. A two years ago a toy came out called the “20 question ball.” This device that fits in the palm of your hand, was loaded with a dictionary and a mathematical algorithm. Think of something, anything. As long as you answer truthfully, In 20 questions the ball will figure it out. This is a toy. Think of what an API like this in medicine could do?

“A Deluge of Data Shapes a New Era in Computing”

Pay attention! This is from Dr. Gray, a world-class scientist. We are moving into the the fourth paradigm of science: data-intensive scientific discovery.

The goal, Dr. Gray insists, is no longer to have the biggest, fastest single computer, but rather “to have a world in which all of the science literature is online, all of the science data is online, and they interoperate with each other.”

Read the article, it is very interesting.

The only real option is for Quest & Labcorb to do what BIOIQ & MyMEDLab do and have an internal “doctor” who approves the requests. If we wait for the Feds it could be a long time.

One other note, we have 2 SEPARATE problems in health care in the US. 1) We need to protect people from financial devastation if they need care. 2) We need to use technology & innovation to blow up the care process and start again. We can do both. But we probably need to fix the first before the second. Which is why the BS in the Senate is so disheartening.

An excerpt:

…Athena designed a program to digitize records and automate billing. It now colonizes the wilderness of paperwork and habitual financial chaos that defines running a doctors office, and it is also moving into clinical record-keeping for individual patients. Some 15,000 physicians in 43 states use Athena as a virtual office, a number that is growing at an annual 30% clip.

It is a massive logistical undertaking. Athena’s main facility is housed in a decommissioned World War II arsenal on the Charles, where 30,000 pounds of paper is processed every month, most of the tonnage being paper checks. Incredibly, doctors also receive on average 1,185 faxes each month—mostly lab results—and those are handled too.

Read on: http://bit.ly/8VfJNI