Former National Coordinator for Health IT David Blumenthal, MD, penned a blog in the Wall Street Journal's "The Experts" addressing the potential for health IT as well as challenges related to interoperability and outdated privacy and security regulations.
Now president of The Commonwealth Fund, Blumenthal wrote about various scenarios in which health IT tools and mobile applications could help people track and monitor their healthcare by providing interactive, real-time information. But, those advancements can't happen unless electronic devices can communicate with each other.
Many EHRs, mobile devices and personal sensors can't exchange information at this point for a variety of reasons but most importantly because "healthcare organizations are fearful of sharing patients' data since it will liberate their customers to go elsewhere for their care." And, EHR vendors are "charging prohibitive fees and creating other barriers to information sharing" to make it more difficult for customers to "switch out one [EHR] for another," he wrote.
Blumenthal also wrote that the current privacy and securitiy regulations were conceived and implemented before the internet existed and therefore, "don't offer adequate protections for the 21st century. "If people can't trust the privacy and security of cloud-based health records, they won't feel comfortable using them."The obstacles, "mostly human in the making, can be solved by humans if the will exists. If we find a way, the healthcare future will be far brighter for all of us."
Editor
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.