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I’ve been really interested in the various standards of interoperability in healthcare. I previously posted a bunch of random items related to CCR and CCD in healthcare. I remember when CCR first came out. It was a very exciting movement to try and make EMR software interoperable.

So, today I was really interested to read Chilmark essentially declaring CCD the winner in the EMR interoperability battle. Officially he says that CCD is gaining traction and CCR is fading, but if you read his post you’ll see that in his opinion (which I trust a lot) CCD will be the winner in the battle between CCR and CCD.

The cool part is that I don’t think those that helped develop CCR will mind at all. Partially because CCD is a derivative of CCR and CDA. Plus, from what I understand, the people behind CCR were mostly interested in facilitating the flow of healthcare information between EMR software. If that is achieved by CCD, then the goal was achieved.

I’ll be interested to hear what the chatter will be around CCD and CCR at HIMSS to see if Chilmark’s feelings are shared by others.

I just came upon a really interesting part of HIMSS 2010 called the HIMSS IT Venture Fair. Many readers probably don’t realize my interest in Venture Capital, entrepreneurship and investing in general. Especially when it comes to technology investments. So, as you can imagine, this part of HIMSS really interests me. I hope that my HIMSS media credentials can get me in to this. Has anyone been to this before?

We’re about to enter an unprecedented time for investment in healthcare IT. There’s going to be a lot of investment, a lot of consolidation and I expect some really interesting new EMR companies who enter the market that we’ve never heard of before. Chilmark research listed 17 HIT acquisitions in the “white hot market for Healthcare IT.” Yet, this is just the very beginning of what we’re going to see.

People are always interested in learning what the adoption rates for EMR software are in the US. Chilmark recently posted about a Harvard School of Public Health study that was presented at the PHAT conference. This study focused on EMR adoption rates and the reasons that doctors and practice managers have chosen not to adopt an EMR, yet. Here’s a summary of the findings:

Hospital EMR

• 90% of Hospitals have no functional comprehensive EHR
• Mostly large hospitals and teaching hospitals do
• Top Barriers to EMR Adoption: Inadequate capital (73%), maintenance costs (44%) and physician resistance (36%)

Ambulatory EMR

• 83% do not have a functional EHR
• 17% stated they have purchased an EHR, but not implemented
• 26% plan to purchase an EMR in the next 2 years
• Top Barriers to EMR Adoption: lack of capital (67%), finding a system that meets their needs (54%) and uncertainty of ROI (51%)