Electronic Medical Records - Coming to a doctor near you?
Recently, the wires have been hot with announcements from government and corporations that Electronic Medical Records are the way to go. A intriguing coalition of companies have announced that their workers will have access to their health records. The companies are - BP America, Intel, Pitney Bowes and Wal-Mart.
This is a good development. Numerous studies/articles/editorials have been authored around the fact that that electronic records, and ancillary technologies - workflows, data mining, drug conflicts, etc. - will reduce health care costs as well as medical mistakes. Here is one from Bill Frist (outgoing Senate Majority Leader).
There are downsides to address as well, the primary being the protection of this very personal data, both technologically as well as with a robust regulatory infrastructure around these records.
Indigo Arc has a hosted (Software as a Service - SaaS) solution for small and medium medical practices, and we are working on expanding our consulting services around EMR and workflow automation. We will be posting more news, opinions, discussion about solutions here in 2007.
This is a good development. Numerous studies/articles/editorials have been authored around the fact that that electronic records, and ancillary technologies - workflows, data mining, drug conflicts, etc. - will reduce health care costs as well as medical mistakes. Here is one from Bill Frist (outgoing Senate Majority Leader).
There are downsides to address as well, the primary being the protection of this very personal data, both technologically as well as with a robust regulatory infrastructure around these records.
Indigo Arc has a hosted (Software as a Service - SaaS) solution for small and medium medical practices, and we are working on expanding our consulting services around EMR and workflow automation. We will be posting more news, opinions, discussion about solutions here in 2007.
Labels: Electronic Medical Records, Workflow
