5 ms·
Yes, exactly. Hospital data is atrocious, on every single level. Duplicate data are everywhere across multiple systems. Hospitals move excruciatingly slow to
by ulkesh 5y ago
Yes, exactly. Hospital data is atrocious, on every single level. Duplicate data are everywhere across multiple systems. Hospitals move excruciatingly slow to do anything technical. And, very few people seem to ever have any real understanding of what is going on with their systems, they tend to only know the user interface and have to rely on their vendor support (Epic, Cerner, etc) for anything beyond that.
I work for a company that I was hoping would be such a disruption point for hospitals (at least in some small way), but instead they decided that it's just too difficult to get hospitals to do much of anything, so we effectively knuckle under -- creating numerous integration points, making more and more copies of data.
The only way this will change is if a large enough player creates direct competition in the EHR/EMR business, with these kinds of data-oriented models in mind, all the while creating a system that, top-to-bottom, is better for both the user, the administrator, and the technical staff. Current players in this space have very little incentive to make their products better. And it reminds me of a quote from Tron Legacy: "Given the prices we charge to students and schools, what sort of improvements have been made in Flynn... I mean, um, ENCOM OS-12?"..."This year we put a "12" on the box."
- divbzero 5y agoPart of the challenge might be the limited number of individuals with expertise in both medicine and technology. Each of those fields are quite specialized and require time to build an understanding of the subject matter.
- nradov 5y agoIt would take billions of dollars and many years to build a new general purpose EHR from scratch. This isn't an industry where a start-up can launch an MVP and get sales to early adopters looking for a competitive advantage. Every major provider organization already has an EHR, and usually an ONC certified one. A new offering has to be at least as good as existing products in every way in order to get any sales. It has to be a 100% solution out of the gate. Outside of general purpose comprehensive EHRs there is still opportunity for new niche market offerings targeting limited medical specialties or types of facilities. For example if you wanted to target, let's say, just dialysis centers or just psychiatrists then the hurdle would be much lower.
- vanviegen 5y agoA bit of inspired legislation could solve all of these problems.
- lowbloodsugar 5y agoSure. That's where the first few billions of dollars and several years are going to have to go.
- voakbasda 5y agoAnd would you trust anyone willing and able to go through that process? The lobbying and political game is filled with sociopaths that would sell out the public for a hot lunch.
- yold__ 5y agoNot sure if you are being sarcastic, but that's precisely what the ACA did. It created giant incentives for hospitals to modernize their medical record systems, which many did.
- sidlls 5y agoThe parent's comment isn't about hospitals sending more money to Epic.
- Taikonerd 5y agoThere are several different open-source EHRs... OpenEMR and OpenVista come to mind. You wouldn't have to build one from scratch.
- nradov 5y agoSure but those existing open source EHRs aren't any better for users than the commercial alternatives. In fact they're mostly worse. OpenEMR is only suitable for small organizations delivering outpatient care, not for large hospital chains. OpenVista has a huge amount of technical debt and isn't getting much new adoption. Neither product has the kind of underlying data model that @ulkesh suggested above. So I think anyone looking to build a truly disruptive product would have to start almost from scratch.