Sunday, July 19, 2009

HITECH and its effect on HIT

An interesting article on how HITECH has its own set of unintended consequences. In this case, the government can "screw things up" by forcing providers into acquiring HIT systems at a such a fast rate (less than 24 months), that they end up buying " certified" systems by large vendors. The result being they end up with systems that are less innovative with poor usability. This is a sure way to stiffle HIT innovation and destroy entrepreneurship. And then we wonder why HIT systems are so primitive compared with systems in other industries. Remember, Meditech introduced the ability to point-and-click by a mouse only within the last 5-7 years. This article does a great job in explaining this:

1 comment:

Benjamin Wright said...

Mark: HITECH will motivate healthcare entities to maintain robust logs and audit trails recording access to all electronic patient data, whether the data be in email, qualified e-patient records, treatment equipment or otherwise. Compliance will not be easy or cheap. --Ben