Ask me how I am and I say "I'm blessed by Jah"

Today we have an exam on Immunology, Neoplasia, and Cancer.
Last night to prepare for the battle ahead I baked cookies while listening to Reggae.

Isn't that what everyone does before an exam? Well they should.

I woke up this morning and found a links to research that where presented at the American College of Physicians annual meeting in Toronto last week.  They were talking about a paper titled EHR-Based Quality Measurement and Reporting—Critical for Meaningful Use and Health Care Improvement.  I am for this.  It's funny, early this week I had a long conversation with a physician about the problems of current EHR systems and they are often more of a burden than a blessing.

I was surprised to hear how slowly the technology is advancing.  I actually don't believe the technology is not advancing.  I suspect that hospitals and people who pay for introducing technology in the health care sector are the ones who are moving slowly and for many good reasons.

• Why experiment on patients if there is little data showing even a marginal benefit
• Resources are limited
• Do physicians, on the whole, want this?
• Do physicians really know what they want?

I imagine a platform that:

• is late baby-boomer friendly (most doctors and patients fit in this category)
• has enough flexiblity and advanced features to be useful/exciting to Gen X and Gen Y physicians and researcher
• is based on a standard that is portable & easily interoperable with existing EMR & EHR systems
• has an advanced, intuitive and attractive GUI (graphical user interface) like Windows 7 or OS X
• is strongly supported and endorsed by public and private insurers

We have to over come the fact that physicians are often cautious when it comes to disrupting the way they practice.  They like research to back any changes they make.  The market for EHR software is smaller than the market operating systems or graphic design software.  We won't see the best and brightest clawing over one another to fix this problem.  Good and even great ideas may not make their way into hospitals for the reasons stated above.  Another reason may be that hospitals don't like to work with one another.  Since there won't be equal penetration of the sector and people don't talk with one another we can not solely rely on market forces to pick a winner. We also need to offer incentive for widespread adoption of proven technologies as well as  widespread education of the future user.

So where do I want to get into this and try to make a difference?
There are many places to enter:

• design a better platform
• push for widespread adoption of a standard way to store the EHR data
• design education programs to get docs on board
• do research to see if there is potential for harm by NOT having EHR

I woke up this morning glad to see the shining sun.  There are problems that need solutions.  I say to myself "Study hard, get the degree and don't worry".