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Comment by tallgiraffe | Hacker News Reader

Epic is ruthless and takes competition out by any means necessary. They are a dinosaur that avoided competition for decades, and Google is a massive thread. This is good news because they are scared, and Google has an infinite runaway to take them out. Epic should have worked tirelessly to innovate and improve US healthcare, but instead chose to stay still and to profit. They won’t be for long.

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Is Google going to try to compete in the EHR space? I don’t think of them as an enterprise software company - at least not in the same way as an Oracle or MSFT. My impression of their strategy/focus is that they are trying to sell cloud compute and ML services?

I feel like Google is an everything company. Traditionally EHR has been done via enterprise and connections, but it doesn’t mean google can’t change it. In fact, they could open a network of Google hospitals, and run their own software on them, or buy a big chain. Much like Amazon got WholeFoods, Google can get into the game if they choose to, and at the end of the day, if they want to grow, they will have to find more avenues to expand to.

>In fact, they could open a network of Google hospitals, and run their own software on them, or buy a big chain. Much like Amazon got WholeFoods,

I'm a fan of Google, but what's with people thinking Silicon Valley companies can easily "get into" everything? What business is Google in that leads you to believe they could run hospitals? They couldn't even design a decent social network, which is their wheelhouse. At least Amazon was selling groceries before they bought Whole Foods.

Generally barriers to entry preserving market power are what Warren Buffett looks at when BH buys companies. SV recognizes that tech typically lowers common barriers to entry like management silo expertise.

I thought they designed a perfectly serviceable social network. As a product I thought it worked better than Facebook. It wasn't enough better to beat the network effect of the latter, however, and medical records keeping would likely be an even tougher nut to crack. How are you going to convince a hospital that just spent $10M on an epic install to switch to your version, even if it is 15% better?

By undercutting the hell out of Epic (at least to start) is what I would expect.

If you think Google can break into the healthcare software space just by being technically better at it, you haven't worked in the healthcare software space.

Google could develop the best electronic medical record the world has ever seen, and still not take business from the companies that have been honing their dirty tricks since 1979.

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