I live in Madison, where Epic is stationed. I run into a lot of people that work there.
They hold the records of over 50% of the US. It's pretty scary when you think about it.
They hold the records of over 50% of the US. It's pretty scary when you think about it.
Any given time 1/3rd of the user-base is dead... and it's growing because the data has to remain in the system for 60 months (HIPAA). It's not scary because it's B.S... No single or group of health provider in the world is close to having access to 125 million active patient-users on an annual basis.
Until Epic disclose any numbers in their 10Q/10K, realize that they're probably taking about "rows" in a db table or nonesuch, not actual patients or anything that will get them in trouble with the SEC/FDA.
I'd guess the reality is Nike is much closer in having shoes on half of the US pedestrian population than Epic having HL7/PII data.
Source: http://host.madison.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/epic-sy...
You're probably right though. It's still scary to think that it's possible for them to be centralized to that degree at all.
Anecdotally, I find it hard to believe they can build truly cohesive software with an insane amount of developer turnover.