In an article published today - data from a Capgemini report suggests that the US will be full of Information Silos with limited interoperability between different EMR systems. From the UK experience, this lack of interoperability has resulted in the need for a complete system overhall plus standardization of EMR for end-providers.
It has always been my position that as much as possible, physicians who work collectively or geographically with one another should select a single EMR system for their group/region if there is to be any hope of future widespread inter-operability between systems.
“There is a high probability that any vendor chosen today will have to significantly alter their approach to internal and external integration, security and nomenclatures over the next few years,” the report cautions. “The federal and some state governments have already started to specify specific standards for integration and nomenclature to support portable electronic medical records.”
Despite that warning, the white paper is essentially upbeat and urges healthcare IT professionals to prepare their current clinical information systems for the evolution toward electronic health records.
To do so, Capgemini is advising that providers:
-Determine if a single EHR system will scale to support all users.... Link: Healthcare IT News.
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Absolutley, I couldn't agree more. The more one product comes to dominate the marketplace, the more safe we, as physicians, become. Partly because of the security of the company not 'going under' but more so because of the obvious inter-operability.
This is why, with the CMA purchasing HealthCareSoftware (MacMedical and the soon to be NetMedical) I am now advocating widespread adoption of their software among general practioners.
The software is owned by 'us'. Fortunately, it also happens to be the best software I have seen to date as well.
Posted by: fred freedman | February 17, 2005 at 09:40 AM