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Month: March 2008

TECH: Interview with Newt Gingrich

The controversial and not-shy-with-his-opinions former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has been very active in recent years promoting the automation of health records and EMRs. But he’s never been a great pains to stress how that would get done from a policy perspective.

I was glad to get a few minute with him because I was able to get straight to that question. And on that topic it appears that Newt has become a fan of government mandates and directed government spending. I think you’ll find this podcast fascinating, although it’s short.

TECH: Finishing up HIMSS!

HIMSS was an intense experience this year. Not only did I present on Health 2.0 at CHIME and at the Cisco Community for Connected Health, but I met lots of old friends and made some new ones at the ICW, HISTalk, Allscripts and Google parties, as well as seeing an almost complete reunion of the old i-Beacon gang. (Bringing back memories of the famous 2001 New Orleans HIMSS beigner 2am powdered sugar fight!)

I also got up very early to attend a breakfast organized by the good people at Allscripts for Newt Gingrich and 50 of his closet friends, and was lucky enough to get 5 minutes to talk with him…..and those of you who think I’m an un-repenting Marxist will be amazed that I agree with him on the issue of mandating and payment for ePrescribing and EMRs! (Although I suspect several of my free market friends do not!)

Unfortunately my experience getting home from HIMSS was way less fun, and I arrived home way later than expected (although I narrowly avoided spending the night on the floor of the Miami airport and actually had a nice room in a rather trendy airport hotel called the Preston in Nashville). And of course by the time I got home I as deeply underwater in Health 2.0 Conference related activities.

So I’m playing catch up and the next several posts will be the remaining podcasts from HIMSS. They’re well well worth listening to.

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