Forbes
How the rules about electronic medical records will change our perceptions about all information technology.
After more than a year of review, the federal government has finally released its "meaningful use" guidelines for electronic medical records. For the health care field this is particularly meaningful because it's the first step taken toward adding the kinds of consistency and efficiency through IT that most corporations take for granted.
Electronic records can eliminate duplication in testing, bring together complete medical histories, disclose adverse drug interactions, reduce errors in patient care, add transparency into a system that has been largely closed to review, and set forth best practices for treating illnesses. The meaningful use regulations allow hospitals and physicians to recoup their IT investments toward this end, at once both modernizing an antiquated health care system and helping to reduce the overhead associated with medical care.
All of this makes sense on paper. The whole purpose of IT is to improve efficiency and make information more readily available to those who are qualified to receive it. But it's also about to set off a debate that will likely last years, if not decades, about the trade-offs between efficiency and patient care, patients' rights and what constitutes adequate care. This is the kind of debate that hasn't taken place outside of groups like the American Hospital Association and the American Medical Association; it's now wide open for public review.
The players in this debate will include lawyers, health care providers, insurance companies, chief information officers, chief medical information officers, chief security officers, technology companies, drug companies, lobbyists and government and private oversight agencies and committees. They will define the types of records that need to be kept, how that information is used and by whom, how it should be stored and new ways to utilize that information for improving treatment and identifying trends.
What's not readily apparent, though, is the effect this will have on the rest of the technology world. Throughout the history of IT there has never been a national debate on how technology gets applied to problems. Decisions typically have been made based upon the needs of a particular company and the capabilities of technology producers to meet those needs. One size doesn't fit all, and best practices often are closely guarded secrets.
To be sure, these best practices can be a competitive advantage or disadvantage, depending upon both short-term and long-term outcomes and how effectively technology is applied. Some companies have scored big with technology. Others have not. Witness the widespread use of commodity Intel ( IN TC - news - people )-based servers in the 1990s, which created massive integration headaches and caused energy use to spike unnecessarily. Those problems are only now being addressed through virtualization and outsourcing into clouds.
While the meaningful use rules are vague about the exact technology, over time they're going to become very clear about the processes involved in standardizing records so that when a patient visits one hospital the records can be transferred from another hospital or doctor's office. This will foster debate about technology practices that have never been out in the open, including the costs of this technology, acceptable times for implementation, upgrade schedules, as well as what works best with what and for what purpose.
In the end, meaningful use will foster meaningful debate, and that debate will reach well beyond the medical field to expose some other closely guarded secrets.
Electronic records can eliminate duplication in testing, bring together complete medical histories, disclose adverse drug interactions, reduce errors in patient care, add transparency into a system that has been largely closed to review, and set forth best practices for treating illnesses. The meaningful use regulations allow hospitals and physicians to recoup their IT investments toward this end, at once both modernizing an antiquated health care system and helping to reduce the overhead associated with medical care.
All of this makes sense on paper. The whole purpose of IT is to improve efficiency and make information more readily available to those who are qualified to receive it. But it's also about to set off a debate that will likely last years, if not decades, about the trade-offs between efficiency and patient care, patients' rights and what constitutes adequate care. This is the kind of debate that hasn't taken place outside of groups like the American Hospital Association and the American Medical Association; it's now wide open for public review.
The players in this debate will include lawyers, health care providers, insurance companies, chief information officers, chief medical information officers, chief security officers, technology companies, drug companies, lobbyists and government and private oversight agencies and committees. They will define the types of records that need to be kept, how that information is used and by whom, how it should be stored and new ways to utilize that information for improving treatment and identifying trends.
What's not readily apparent, though, is the effect this will have on the rest of the technology world. Throughout the history of IT there has never been a national debate on how technology gets applied to problems. Decisions typically have been made based upon the needs of a particular company and the capabilities of technology producers to meet those needs. One size doesn't fit all, and best practices often are closely guarded secrets.
To be sure, these best practices can be a competitive advantage or disadvantage, depending upon both short-term and long-term outcomes and how effectively technology is applied. Some companies have scored big with technology. Others have not. Witness the widespread use of commodity Intel ( IN TC - news - people )-based servers in the 1990s, which created massive integration headaches and caused energy use to spike unnecessarily. Those problems are only now being addressed through virtualization and outsourcing into clouds.
While the meaningful use rules are vague about the exact technology, over time they're going to become very clear about the processes involved in standardizing records so that when a patient visits one hospital the records can be transferred from another hospital or doctor's office. This will foster debate about technology practices that have never been out in the open, including the costs of this technology, acceptable times for implementation, upgrade schedules, as well as what works best with what and for what purpose.
In the end, meaningful use will foster meaningful debate, and that debate will reach well beyond the medical field to expose some other closely guarded secrets.
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