MrHISTalk this morning gives a reminder to the world that health care IT ain’t a place of hot innovation

Computerworld correctly identifies a lack of hospital funds as a barrier to the interoperability lovefests going on, but then says this: "Because many hospitals run on 20-year-old IT systems, smaller institutions are often left behind, while leading ones forge ahead." Well, I know lots of big, leading hospitals and most of them run clinical software at least 20 years old. In fact, most of the shiny displays on the HIMSS floor were selling software that’s at least 20 years old. Old stuff: GE/IDX, QuadraMed, MEDITECH, Misys, most of McKesson and Siemens. Relatively new (10 years or so): Cerner, Eclipsys, Epic. Architected and developed in this millennium: zero.

Yup it was called Cerner “Millennium” for a reason—it was supposed to come out then! (Like many other I fondly remember the good old days of 2000 and in some alternate universe I’m retired on a 1,000 acre country estate from my i-Beacon stock options)! Nothing essentially wrong with old reliable systems, but Web2.0 this is not. Plus MrHISTalk didn’t mention health plan systems, most of which may be even older….