EMR Helpline

THE NEXT GENERATION OF TECH VS. THE CURRENT GENERATION OF EHR April 20, 2011

I was recently watching the morning program Squawk Box on CNBC when it ran a segment called “Masters of the Market”. The episode that morning featured Roger McNamee, managing director and cofounder of Elevation Partners. He was discussing his long-term outlook on technology and the important issues that he felt would shape the future of technology. He specifically felt that Microsoft Windows would experience a continued decline, particularly as smartphones and tablets continue to increase. He also believed that there would be a significant clash regarding the Internet, with the world wide web/browser model versus the app model.

I found his comments extremely interesting, particularly since his predictions were based on the current trends that are already occurring in tech. Although he was discussing the general market outlook for the technology sector, I quickly found myself reflecting on the current state of electronic health records in regard to his revelations.

While the current initiatives to promote EHR are looked upon as “transformative advances” in healthcare, after listening to this discussion, I was left feeling that it was possible that the upcoming “advances” in healthcare may unfortunately represent “yesterday’s technology” once they arrive.

The biggest reason for my concern is based on the fact that the current EHR systems are essentially Windows or browser-based systems. These two areas were focused on in McNamee’s comments as potential areas of significant change in the technology market.

While Microsoft Windows will probably never completely go away, the fact that corporateAmericahas already been moving away from its reliance on Windows could potentially represent a significant concern for physicians in the future, particularly in small medical practices. If there is a dramatic shift from Windows, or if Microsoft adopts a completely different strategy or platform, then small medical practices may be left with “legacy” Windows-based EHR systems that are no longer supported as healthcare IT moves forward. The economic repercussions of such a change could be devastating for small medical practices since they typically lack the financial resources that larger healthcare organizations can access (thereby reducing their ability to access significant IT support or to absorb the cost of having to obtain an entirely new EHR system).

This same scenario of an outdated platform could also affect the browser-based EHR applications. Although the economic impact would seem to be less of an issue, the fact that there is significant competition ongoing between the browser-based and application-based models may potentially have repercussions. In addition, the eventual introduction of HTML5 into the web-based systems may create potential compatibility issues unless the web-based EHR software companies are vigilant in maintaining their products.

Given the status of EHR/EMR from even a decade ago, the current environment for electronic health records obviously represents a dramatic leap forward in technology.  I raise these issues for consideration, however, to point out the simple fact that while the current EHR/EMR may represent a significant advance in healthcare, in many respects, healthcare information technology itself appears to still be significantly behind the times when compared to the advances in the overall technology sector. Hopefully, as the EHR initiative continues to advance, this gap between the current reality of healthcare IT and the current/next generation of technology (in general) will continue to close, thereby eventually allowing the electronic health record to deliver on its full potential for the future of healthcare in theUnited States.