The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) contains a whole chapter called HITECH. This catchy acronym stands for Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health and makes you wonder if “they” construct the acronym before deciding on what information to convey. It basically mandates a number of fairly stringent disclosure requirements for HIPAA covered entities... (more...)

While most discussions on successful Electronic Medical Record (EMR) implementation and adoption circle around the proper implementation of clinical workflows, standard order sets, diagnostic codes, and the all important CPOE (Computerized Provider Order Entry), little time is spent on thinking about how the applications actually make it to the users. I have talked to CMIOs this week at HIMSS who... (more...)

Recently, Radio Magazine had an interesting cover story. A patient at home uses a multi-function device to take her vitals and communicates in real time via a video conference with her doctor. The physician gets instant access to the data and can visually inspect the patient through a two-way camera. All communication is wireless and covers long distances – wow. Well, the article wasn’t... (more...)

Mario Andretti, the great race car driver, was once asked by a reporter if he was ever afraid when driving a formula one car and pushing the envelope through the duration of a race. Andretti answered: “If you’re not uncomfortable, you’re not going fast enough.” How quickly can you move your organization to a virtual desktop computing paradigm? At what speed are you comfortable... (more...)

I had the pleasure of attending Gartner’s Symposium and IT Expo in Orlando in October. Other than talking to a lot of customers and partners, I took time off between booth hours to attend sessions and I was especially interested in anything labeled “Cloud”. Gartner defines Cloud computing as a style of computing, where elastically scalable IT services are delivered to customers... (more...)