Comments on: The EMR-Medical Devices Mess

By: Why Healthcare IT is Not a Game Changer | Bob on Medical Device Software

Why Healthcare IT is Not a Game Changer | Bob on Medical Device Software — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:43:19 +0000

[...] talked about HIT problems before, e.g. Healthcare Un-Interoperability and The EMR-Medical Devices Mess. With all of the ARRA/HITECH talk along with the National Healthcare debate raging it made me [...]

By: Plug-and-Play Medicine | Bob on Medical Device Software

Plug-and-Play Medicine | Bob on Medical Device Software — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 03:56:55 +0000

[...] what software platform? I discussed the MD PnP program a couple of years ago. Other than the Integrated Clinical Environment (ICE, ASTM [...]

By: EMR

EMR — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 18:13:04 +0000

That does sound like a pretty big mess. Hopefully it’s fixed by now.

By: Dreaming of Flexible, Simple, Sloppy, Tolerant in Healthcare IT | Bob on Medical Device Software

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 17:37:06 +0000

[...] to mind is HL7? I’m not suggesting that some sort of open ad hoc system is the solution to The EMR-Medical Devices Mess. But it’s painfully obvious that what has been built so far closely resemble “great [...]

By: Transcription Guy

Transcription Guy — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 22:57:47 +0000

The purpose of HIPAA was to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the healthcare system through the development of established health data standards and requirements for the transmission and storage of electronic health information. Currently, however, most EMR and medical transcription companies dont comply with these standards. We need to create a licencing mechanism to ensure that companies are indeed HIPAA compliant, similar to how manufacturers get ISO-9001 certified. Otherwise, the act just turns into a marketing tag line for companies.

By: Tim Gee

Tim Gee — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 17:21:58 +0000

Bob, thanks for the link! You’re right, connectivity in ambulatory care is even worse off than in hospitals. It is expensive in hospitals, but in the physician office market many vendors (especially EMR vendors) refuse to do the work.

Certainly configuring HL7 at each installation is not practical in a highly fragmented market like physicians (where there are hundreds of thousands of practice locations). Proprietary APIs, like that offered by Midmark on the device side, and AllScript on the EMR side, are even worse. Integrating an API is a much bigger task than configuring the table of an HL7 interface. And there are dozens of medical device vendors in that market, and hundreds of EMR vendors.

There are ways to overcome this situation, but it won’t happen through market “evolution” – it will take a real effort. Eventually the market will drive both device and EMR vendors to make this effort. Bob, I hope we’re both still around to see it!

By: Bridging the “Device Divide”

Bridging the “Device Divide” — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 20:28:23 +0000

[...] run across. It’s just that, as Robert Nadler, an employee at a device manufacturer, recently blogged: “The problem… is that we don’t have the resources to build each unique interface required to [...]