I like I’m sure many of you have been a bit overwhelmed by the amazing outpouring of love that’s happened after the passing of Steve Jobs. It was weird for me, because I knew that Steve Jobs health wasn’t good but I was still a bit shocked to see on Twitter that he’d passed away. Certainly a major loss for his family, but the effect will be felt well beyond them.

I’ve been touched by a number of posts throughout the healthcare IT and EMR blogosphere. Here’s a roundup of a few of the Steve Jobs posts I found.

Jim Tate did a post that considers what if Steve Jobs had developed an EHR. Here’s one section:

For the past 5 years I’ve kept hoping that Apple would develop an EHR. One that when someone first used it they would say: “Yes, this is how it should be”. Whatever he developed and released to the world didn’t even need an owner’s manual. It just worked in a very human way.

I know I’ve written about the possible Apple EHR as well and what it might look like. As I read Jim’s post I couldn’t help but wonder if the reason Steve Jobs didn’t take on a project like an EHR was because our regulations and reimbursement don’t work in a human way.

Dr. Liu on Kevin MD wrote a post about Steve Jobs as a physician mentor. I love the idea that Steve Jobs was his mentor even though they never met. He offered this heartfelt thought:

I as a doctor I’m incredibly sorry that medicine has not yet evolved to the point that a cure exists for the rare type of cancer Jobs. I’m sorry that he is so ill at an incredibly young age, in his mid 50s, when many people begin to contribute even more to society with all of the knowledge and experience they’ve acquired. The future might be a little less bright without Jobs leading his team at Apple on creating products and experiences none of us truly knew existed until he showed them to us.

It is such a shame that he died so young. In fact, I’d say that might be the hardest part of it all.

The self professed Mac Fan boy, John Moore from Chilmark research, paid a tribute as well. He highlights some of the key things that Steve Jobs did with Apple products:
-Design aesthetics combined with functionality rule
-Supporting a renegade
-Systems rather than parts
-Supporting innovation

Yep, Steve Jobs will be missed in healthcare and well beyond.

The always insightful John Moore (so many great John’s in Healthcare IT), posted a great blog post back in September of 2010 about Google Health hitting the reset button. The post was interesting as it tried to show Google Health going in a new direction. The irony was that almost a year ago John had posted about Google Health’s irrelevancy in the PHR market.

Despite the up downs of Google Health, today John put Google Health in Stasis. He sights a great list of yellow and dark orange flags that are a bad sign for those who love Google Health. Here’s one section from his post:

Beginning in late March 2011, we started hearing the rumors of the impending demise of Google Health once again (is this becoming some sort of annual thing with Google Health?). We waited a few weeks to see if the rumors would die down, they did not. We put a call into Google Health to set up a briefing, get an update. Response back was slow (one yellow flag). When they did get back to us, they said it will be at least a couple of weeks (two yellow flags). Next, our Google contact told us by email that they were going to hand Chilmark’s inquiry off to Google’s PR department (screaming dark orange flag). And now today, we received an email from one of Google Health’s most visible spokespersons, Missy Krasner that she is leaving Google.

He then projected that we shouldn’t “expect anything new out of Google Health for at least the next 5 years.” That’s quite the projection. However, I’d take it one step further. I don’t expect to see anything really mainstream out of PHR software for another 5 years either.

I do think that PHR software is going to have a strong showing in chronic patients. I could also see an interesting niche in secondary caretaker healthcare management using a PHR (I’ve got an interesting announcement about baby boomer healthcare coming soon). I definitely want an online means for tracking my parents healthcare. Not to mention, then all of my brothers and sisters could participate as well. A few other niches are likely to be successful as well. Not to mention, other consumer PHR-like applications for healthcare that will become popular like the Nike+.

It’s been a couple weeks since the news came out that Microsoft was shutting down its operations and sales for Amalga HIS. It always felt awkward for me to see Microsoft purchasing a software that was so specific. It just didn’t make sense to me for Microsoft to go after this type of specific product.

John over at Chilmark Research has a good post with his reasons why Amalga didn’t work well for Microsoft. I’m still pondering his comment that the EMR market is mature. However, his take away is a very good one:

Performing a viability assessment on a potential vendor may not reduce one’s risk. Even a big, viable company such as Microsoft may change its mind on occassion and chose to exit a market.

The only clarification I’d make is that a viability assessment does not equal evaluating if the company is big and viable. I cover this topic in my EMR selection e-Book and in these two posts. Not to mention this post on open source (free) EMR software viability.

I think the viability assessment is useful and essential. Just don’t make the simple assumption that large means viable. Ask Misys users about that one.

I was really interested to read John Moore’s post about the irrelevancy of Google Health leading to its demise. It’s a great post that’s worth a read for anyone interested in the PHR space and in particular Google’s participation in healthcare. I’m a little reticent to bet against Google, but the lack of commitment on Google’s part to healthcare says something. I mean, Google has quite a bit going on with cell phones (Android), web browsers (Chrome), and operating systems (Chrome) just to name a few. You can see why Google Health isn’t high on their priority list. Oh yes, and of course they still have to maintain their dominance in search and all the other products they have (gmail, google docs, calendar, etc etc etc).

With that said, some of the most interesting things were found in the comments of Chilmark’s post. Here’s a couple excerpts:

My college health class used car upkeep as a metaphor for how we take care of our health. With my car, I know I should pay more attention to everything: it’d probably run better if I looked at it more, kept up with the latest from my manufacturer (hey, actually read my owner’s manual).
But honestly? I’m just as happy to pay a mechanic to keep track of what I need, when I need it. The money I pay is as much to escape the tedium of keeping up with all that knowledge as it is for the service itself. I’m willing to bet a lot of people feel that way about health: they probably believe they should be involved, but when push comes to shove they’d rather just pay someone else to worry about it.

This rings far too true. We care, but not enough to really care (at least until we really need to care).

I belive what we are seing here is the end of the B2C direction for PHR. John Moore was the 1st to say that PHR is for B2B model. Google designed it’s solution for B2C (login to data through Google). this was wrong. if you see real addade value apps in the market they are offred as B2B under Microsoft HealthVault.

PHR = B2B Very important lesson learned.