An introduction

And so it begins. I've done some personal blogging, but it feels like time to add my voice to the throngs writing about health care and information technology. There is so much to be done in further automating health care, and at least as much mis-information as meaningful dialogue.

The AARA has folks in a tizzy. Certainly the feds are capable of throwing money at anything, but look what that has accomplished in our public education system over the last 25 years. What we really need to be discussing is where the real gains from IT spending can come.

Certainly electronic medical records eliminate mistakes caused by mis-reading physician handwriting. (I can talk about MDs - both my father and father-in-law are Family Practice physicians) A complete list of medications allows for real time drug-drug interaction checking. Patients really like not having to spell their name every time they start with a new health care provider. All of these seemingly simple things are what an non-health-care IT professional might assume is already happening every time in every health care environment. In fact, they're not.

We need to achieve those goals and move well beyond them. We need ease of use that gets even doctors willing to absorb the up-front data entry cost required to get the gains on the back end. We need systems as intuitive as the iPhone, and close to as inexpensive. We need connectivity that allows even rural home care workers access to their data while in the home. That's the kind of innovation that will get us to meaningful use that is really meaningful.

My goal is to clarify these and other thoughts, and have something of interest to add to the hubbub. I will work to keep my signal to noise ratio high, so keep on watching.