Electronic health records
Healthcare IT–the perfect product
Jun/08/09 09:29
As discussed previously, I am convinced that the healthcare IT market is poised for explosive growth. I think there are going to be a few challenges to entrepreneurs and larger companies to participate in this growth, including FDA oversight, privacy and security, hardware/software incompatibility, and linking to medical devices. Finally, marketing to the customer base, whether it is the alternate site (physicians, surgery centers, long-term facilities) or hospitals, is going to take individuals who are skilled in the medical products marketing instead of IT marketing. Read More...
Healthcare IT–growth drivers
Jun/03/09 20:03
As I have discussed several times before, there seems to be a significant amount of activity in health information technology. President Obama’s stimulus package includes $19 billion to fund hospitals and individual physicians to upgrade their IT systems, specifically to migrate from paper-based patient records to electronic health records. In the near future, it would be possible for a patient record to be shared between all parts of the healthcare system. For example, patient with a severe trauma can be treated more quickly and effectively, if the emergency room had access to the patients record knowing what health issues may be critical to decisions about treating the patient. Having that information available within minutes can be crucial to saving the patient’s life. Anyone knowledgeable about the healthcare system in the US probably can list out many more examples where an online patient record can be the difference between success and failure in treating a patient.
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Healthcare IT growth potential
Today, Kim Hart at the Washington Post wrote an interesting column about one of the positive effects of the recently passed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (stimulus package) for the health care industry. Approximately $19 billion of the package is specifically targeted for health information technology (HIT) upgrades for providers such as hospitals, clinics, and individual physician practices. As discussed previously, improved HIT is a cornerstone of a long-term plan to improve the quality and decrease the costs of health care in the US.
Investment in HIT should have some positive consequences to the healthcare industry:
Investment in HIT should have some positive consequences to the healthcare industry:
- Improve health care quality
- Prevent medical errors
- Reduce health care costs
- Increase administrative efficiencies
- Decrease paperwork
- Expand access to affordable care