Electronic Medical Records

Via News.Com: an article entitled Clinton: Time to digitize all Americans’ medical records

“We go online to buy things from Mongolia, we go online to do our banking, but we can’t go online in a secure, encrypted, confidential way to get access to our medical records,” she lamented.

There are too many articles to list containing opinions for and against electronic medical records based solely on their security. Security is the 800lb gorilla when it comes to this because:

• Both HIPAA and related regulations, as well as the general public require the most stringent privacy controls on their medical data.

• Doctors and emergency medical technicians cannot afford to wait or struggle with security technology in a life-or-death emergency medical situation.

Unfortunately it is still a choice between privacy and speed of access. There are tons of efforts underway to standardize the data formats, the security, the interchanges, etc. Lots of very smart people are already working on it. Given the scale and the visibility, I don’t think we will see wholesale change to electronic medical records in the next 5-9 years.