The most classic line of this whole article is John McCain wanting medical records online, from one who does not even use a computer, but on with the rest here, about the skepticism about Google and Microsoft. First of all both give away a lot of free software and neither one is in the healthcare business as any type of provider, hospital, etc. One other thought, how reliable is email with both, no problems on my forefront, and who has the largest banks of servers across the world and US, chanced are these 2 are more than likely number one and two, so capacity is no problem as well as server up time which I am guessing is right about 99.99 percent these days.
In my opinion, I simply find the worries about security with either of them pretty much non-existent, as both serve the enterprise and the government as well. BD
Computerizing such records makes sense "instead of you filling out forms in triplicate when you go to the hospital, that will reduce medical errors and reduce costs," said Barack Obama during the candidate's second debate Oct. 7. "Let's put health records online," replied John McCain.
Major corporations are promoting the concept, as well. In May, Google set up an area on its Web site, dubbed Google Health, where people can place their health records and share the information with doctors and others. Patients now can exchange health data with only a few doctors participating with Google Health, but Google plans to broaden its record-sharing features. Not to be outdone, Microsoft in June announced a deal to let Kaiser Permanente's 159,000 employees store their medical data on Microsoft's HealthVault site. Late last month, Microsoft unveiled a similar arrangement for patients covered by insurer Aetna.
As Microsoft has promised, Google won't pepper patients with unwanted ads, said Dr. Roni Zeiger, product manager for Google Health. Instead, he added, the Internet search giant believes it can benefit indirectly by providing a vital consumer service.
Healthy debate on electronic health records - San Jose Mercury News
Microsoft does have a hospital EHR/EMR 'legacy' type offering to compete with Cerner, McKesson - it's called Amalga....
ReplyDeletehttp://www.emrupdate.com/blogs/ducknet/archive/2008/09/19/hospital-to-subsidize-doctors-ehrs-california.aspx
Unlike Google to date, MS is quite aggressively going for both the entrenched payors via an installed EMR infrastructure and going DTC with HealthVault.
They've also got more active partnerships in the field with BIDMC, AmericanWell, etc.
Thank you Jen for your comment, I looked at the link you provided for more information on Amalga and that was my post too over at EMR Update as they syndicate my blog over there, so I'm in 2 places at once!
ReplyDeleteYes I am very aware of Amalga being a Microsoft Partner and especially the level of Business Intelligence it offers to healthcare.
If you do a search on the site here you will find many more of my posts related to Amalga too. One of my points of recent I made is that ambulatory EHRs should look at an interface with their products as Microsoft has Tech Centers located all around the US and the World to help create dot net applications that will in fact integrate with Amalga. I am sort of aware of that fact due to the contract with St. Josephs Hospital here in Orange, California.
HealthVault I feel also will at some point in time fall in to the entire system as well, as that is the way Microsoft works, just look at MS Office for a prime example.
We have systems out there presently with all kinds of existing servers and interfaces that need to come together and the expense and working with what is presently working in the system has a lot to do with where decisions are made, along with budgets too!
Recently Dr. Halamka at BIDMC posted about his integration with SQL Server 2008, so it comes in to the mix along with some of the Linux and other solutions presently at work there. Microsoft will also license Linux for business consumers as wel.
Check out some of the other Microsoft posts here and you will find quite a bit about Amalga and other Microsoft technologies that I write about that are being incorporated in to health care, and check out the Common User Interface as well, a Code plex or free program donated by Microsoft to being a common set of screens to the computer so physicians and hospitals can share some standards and make life easier for the doctors and nurses who use these systems too!
Thanks again,