What do you see in the cloud? We see the future of EMR systems.
"While other industries are flourishing as a result of advances in data access and information flow, health care lags. While other industries use IT as a tool for revenue growth to attract and retain new and existing customers, healthcare IT can inhibit or prevent efforts to connect with customers in ways that create loyalty."
That’s Valley View Hospital CIO Dick Escue writing in a 2014 Wall Street Journal Op-ed.
What can be done then? What aspects of healthcare IT must evolve beyond their current state?
Escue sees the answer in the interoperability of EMR systems.
In order to grow, healthcare IT must embrace collaborative, social, and open systems. New systems must be able to adapt to change and leverage new advances in technology when the opportunity arises.
Single-vendor technology platforms cannot describe themselves in this way. A strictly consolidated EMR system cannot boast about its openness.
This is where the cloud comes in. Moving medical records from locally based systems to web based systems will greatly increase interoperability and collaboration between healthcare providers. If healthcare IT is to grow, these are necessary traits of all new systems. And these traits are found only in the cloud.
