Meaningful Use Solidifies EHR as the Database of Healthcare

Earlier this month I wrote a post describing EHR as the Database of Healthcare. I believe this is a powerful and important thing to understand. It also led to some good conversation in the comments. As an entrepreneur I’m always interested to see the trends in the industry to hopefully better understand what is going to happen in the future. I think that this is one of those trends.

Just to make the case clearer, consider the effects of meaningful use on EHR software. Meaningful use stage 1 and EHR certification has already hijacked at least one EHR development cycle and you can be sure that meaningful use stage 2 and stage 3 will be hijacking another couple EHR development cycles. You heard me right. In order to meet the EHR certification and meaningful use requirements, most EHR vendors have to put a whole development team focused just on meeting those government requirements.

Meaningful use has codified EHRs into a box.

Instead of allowing EHR software to create innovative solutions it requires standards be met for storing and accessing info. Sure it also adds in security and tries to work towards interoperability, but those aren’t innovations that doctors want to see.

I expect many of the best healthcare innovators will build on top of the EHR base, not try and build the base again.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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