I have a piece up at Health-IT World called Are We Close to Real Data Integration ‘Redefining Healthcare’? It features a really interesting company called CMTC. Shimon Schurr, the CEO, tells me that they can get to real data extraction and integration from any system in context with all data, today. They’ve done in an online consult service with NY Presbyterian, and are about to launch one in Oncology with Univ of Virgina, Kodak, etc.

I’m not enough of a geek to understand the real difference between CMTC, Teramedica, and the other SOA integration companies, but imagine the possibilities if these guys are correct and we can do real online consults using data that already exists, and share those over the web today?  That really does give the possibility that second opinions and therefore national marketing of the genuinely best experts.

At lunch I sat next to someone who used to work at Apollo hospitals, the Indian company that can do top-notch surgery at 1/10th the US price. Imagine getting a consortium consulting on individuals disease from across the world and then moving the procedure to where its best and cheapest.

It wont happen overnight; I’m too much of a pessimist to believe that, but it’s fun to imagine and to see the folks tilting at those windmills and figure out if they might just succeed.