Netrics HD

In his recent Internet Evolution article Stimulus Plan Moves Healthcare Tech Center Stage, John Soat reported on the challenges facing healthcare providers under the section of the United States federal stimulus bill known as the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, which is intended to jumpstart the use of digital technology in the healthcare industry, in particular the use of e-health records.

The article mentions some of the excellent e-health technology efforts under way at General Electric, Google, and Microsoft.  It’s amazing how 20 billion dollars (at least) in government funding can lead some of the biggest companies to focus on building digital technology solutions for the healthcare industry, which is something long overdue and for far longer than the recent stimulus funding has become available.

One of the primary challenges of the e-health evolution is in the area of electronic health records (EHR).  Back in March 2009, I wrote an article for the Executive Healthcare Management (EHM) magazine about lessons from the bleeding edge of EHR.

The evolution of digitizing, storing, and successfully retrieving accurate information necessary for servicing customers has been well underway in other industries for decades.  The evolution of customer data management is continuing and still has challenges to overcome.

However, in the healthcare industry, the customer is primarily a patient and the service being provided is primarily medical treatment.  In many cases, retrieving accurate information can be a matter of life and death.

Duplicate customer data can undermine the effectiveness of sales and marketing programs, causing unnecessary costs and wasteful spending that greatly reduces revenue.

However, duplicates in a master patient index can cause incorrect or outdated information to be used as the basis for medical treatments.  These mistakes can incur costs of a human nature far greater and far more important than costs of a financial nature.

HITECH is indeed presenting the healthcare industry with significant challenges to overcome.  However, these challenges are not simply about modernizing the industry with the latest and greatest technology.

Healthcare is a great example of how innovative technology is fundamentally about improving the quality of human life.