Don't Let Health IT Go Extinct

Health IT is running in circles. For too long, vendors have replaced old technology with different outdated technology. As an industry we can’t tolerate this anymore. Unfortunately, some want to benefit from keeping things from being interoperable. It is unfortunate that the technology issues that matter most in health IT are yet to be settled, because the industry as a whole is stuck in a time warp.

You have asked for interoperability, but you still can’t get your patients’ records from their primary care physician’s office because they are on different brands of software. You have asked for user interfaces that are fast and work intuitively, but your software vendor just released their most recent upgrade — running on technology from a decade ago, with the same old interface and a few minor cosmetic changes.

The cynics are wrong

We can prove that it is possible to be interoperable and to have fast, intuitive interfaces in health IT. Others will tell you that you have no choice but to use old technology. That is, once again, wrong. You deserve better. You deserve change.

And when I say change, I mean more than upgrading to the latest version of a bug-filled EHR. We need to replace them with products built using the technologies so many of our sister industries already use — technologies that are open, interoperable, reliable, and fast.

The commitment worth making is to do things differently and to get results: lower your overall health IT costs while providing the tools clinicians need to improve outcomes. Not to tell you how to run your hospital, or to say “we know best” like some of the health IT dinosaurs out there — but to use technology to let you practice medicine the way you know is best.

Show that you aren’t going to tolerate health IT dinosaurs taking your money and providing outdated, expensive, hard-to-maintain systems. The extinction event this industry needs is the one that clears the way for something better.