NY Times: Tech Rivalries Impede Digital Medical Record Sharing

This article in the New York Times highlights one of the major issues currently facing EHRs and EMRs (even though it is an issue they were meant to solve!): seamless sharing of data. The main issue is competing tech companies and operating systems are not working well with their competitors and even blocking some information. Doctors, including a pediatrician in the Massachusetts area, are complaining that they are unable to send or receive information to/from hospitals that they are sending their patients to. This is a major issue, if these competing tech companies make their operating systems unable to share and receive information from different EMR operating systems, ultimately undermining the main goal of utilizing electronic medical records.

The article mentions acts by the government to try to combat these problems, including getting the Federal Trade Commission to enforce anti-trust and consumer protection laws in the healthcare IT industry, as well as congress enacting a bill to make blocking information a federal crime. Blocking or preventing the sharing of this critical information in order to secure more business and discourage consumers from choosing a competing EMR system is another major issue that has been facing the health care industry since it began: making a profit on people's health.

Link:
Tech Rivalries Impede Digital Medical Record Sharing By ROBERT PEAR

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