SPONSORED POST

By DAVID LEVESQUE

As more people die every day from COVID-19 (we were edging towards 20,000 casualties in the U.S. at the time this article was written), the answers to what a cure could look like are waiting to be discovered in EMRs and patients’ homes. We have the technology and business models to turn this data into insights, but we are stalling…  What seems to be the problem?

First this. It’s time to end the illusion that patients do not pay for healthcare. Whether it is out of pocket, paycheck, or taxes, U.S. citizens pay for 100% of the healthcare spend. It is indeed their healthcare. It follows logically from this that patients should be allowed and empowered to lower the cost and increase the quality of the care they receive. Receiving access to their own medical records is one important way to accomplish this.

In 2017, when I asked the World Economic Forum if there is a study on the cost of lack of interoperability in healthcare they said – “That’s a good idea.”