I just read an interesting article by Pat Speer in Information Management Magazine. The author points out that data integration initiatives around health care are hot topics today.
Certainly it is needed.
According to EMC, fewer than 10 percent of America's 5,000 hospitals and 17 percent of its 800,000 doctors have digitized their patients' records. The smaller the practice, the less likely an investment has been made in EHR (Electronic Health Records) technology.
I find this astounding. How will this transformation in healthcare take place? I believe the consumer (aka the “informed patient”) will be the spark plug that gets this behemoth moving forward. Health insurers, progressive HMOs and technology savvy medical practices will begin to recognize the convergence of easily accessible EHR and PHR (Personal Health Records) as their most valuable opportunity to become a trusted source to their members.
Speer points out that Aetna for example, with over 12 million members, is a poster child for this progressive movement. Aetna's health information management systems and electronic medical records are now fully integrated.
They started this initiative five years ago, according to their head of e-health product management Dan Greden. "At that time” Greden says, “we had 1 million members who had a PHR [personal health record] available to them. With the most rapid increase seen in the last 15 months, today we have close to 9 million members taking advantage of this program."
This is heady stuff. It’s an omen of a huge tectonic shift that’s about to happen around data integration within the healthcare industry. A space I fully expect WorldAPP to play a major role in.
Meanwhile I only have to walk into my local GP and be handed a sheaf of redundant forms to fill out and immediately I can see a whole bunch of IDEAS (Integrated Data Engineering Applications) that would make this fragmented health care process run better.
Can't wait!
http://www.information-management.com/issues/2007_59/health_care_third_party_data_management_warehousing-10015489-1.html
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