Who's working on Obama's promise of electronic medical records in 5 years? | Hacker News Reader

Who's working on Obama's promise of electronic medical records in 5 years?

4 pointsniels_olson5 comments

There's certainly no lack of EMR software, but who's going to make sure I, the doctor, can get records from different databases and have them presented to me in the same format? No matter what hospital or office I'm in, no matter where the information is coming from, I would really like it to be presented to me, whether on a screen or on paper, in the same format. Right now the state of the farce is that every doctor spends more time learning the 9 zillion EMR systems than on the patients they treat. The frustration factor definitely leads to medical errors.

Anybody working on this?

Edit: President mentions the 5 year horizon in the weekly address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDfpd8GV9dI

I consulted for a startup that transcribed medical records and enabled insurance companies to search and filter them to find fraud, malpractice, whatever.

Apparently changing the workflow in a big insurance company isn't like steering a big ship, it's like steering an island.

Microsoft and Google are hard to ignore - even if there are zillions of EMRs.

There's room in the long tail for smaller ideas - but this is probably going to be a formats war.

http://www.microsoft.com/industry/healthcare/providers/busin...

http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN285482202...

There are already some industry & government formats:

Prescriptions: http://www.ncpdp.org

Health Records: http://www.medicare.gov/PHR/Default.asp

There is a startup located in Connecticut that's found a reliable, one day turnaround transcription and medical filing service. It'll probably get a nice, fat Obama boost soon.

http://www.imedx.com/

I was asking this at my doctors office yesterday. I'm sure the arcane situation is due to the required confidentiality needed with patient data. Average people (secretaries, receptionist) can not be trusted to keep digital data secure, given the cleverness of social engineering. Moreover, public perception of data insecurity is well established. So, you would need a very secure system and to convince the public.

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