JD Kleinke is always one of the more controversial and fun people in health care policy and health care IT. He doesn’t just write about stuff–he also gets really involved. From his early days at HCIA to his more recent roles at Healthgrades. And now of course he’s the head of Omnimedix — which was developing the technology for the employer based PHR Dossia, funded by WalMart, Intel et al. But apparently not funded enough.
I had a wide-ranging discussion with JD about his policy work, his career, what he thinks about health plans, and what went wrong with Dossia. The interview is of course well worth a listen.
Alas, I think Dossia will soon be a faint memory, lost in a sea of unfullfilled albeit ambitious promises of an electronically-savvy healthcare system. Very unfortunate. Perhaps I’m the only one who feels this way? Maybe it can be salvaged.
EMR Guy,
http://www.electronic-medical-record.blogspot.com
Exellent Interview Matthew!
Highly Informative and Very Enjoyable. Quite curious to learn more about what JD and Omnimedix bring to the table on the near term. From my perch, I have no doubt it will be significant and meaningful and hopefully gets enough traction to stay the course to the end.
Neil Ferree
Los Angeles, CA
If anyone can make healthcare IT fun, it’s Kleinke. Thanks for the interview and keep up the great posts.
Kleinke and Omnimedix are just one more vendor with a product nobody is sure they want and which a lot of people think will have negative effects on privacy and on health care delivery due to insurance involvement. Kleinke is just a particularly persuasive guy — do not confuse this with “fun” or ethical; he is no more ethical than the rest of the vendors or retailers, just out to make a buck. Unfortunately, he tries to portray himself as some kind of consumer champion, in order to better sell a product he didn’t even fully come up with yet.