I just read a paper written by R. Hillestead et.al in 2005 and I was intrigued by the topic and it’s relevance today.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/24/5/1103.long
I’m not focusing on the title, although it has relevance – ‘Electronic Medical Record (EMR)’ versus ‘Electronic Health Record (EHR)’. The context is still very relevant today.
I do believe Healthcare IT can significantly transform the landscape, but we are not there yet. What has started is the ‘foundation’. Adoption of EMR is the broad groundwork; primarily because the first goal is to enable change. Change in Providers mindsets about the use of technology.
There is one reason why I believe in ‘Web based EMR’ or ‘Cloud EMR’ or ‘SaaS EMR’. That reason has to do with the ultimate goal of transforming healthcare costs. Web based EMR makes sharing of data and therefore reducing costs possible.
I leave it to you to decide if we’ve made progress.
