For the majority of my career I have been obsessed with creating technologies to modernize our largely dysfunctional U.S. healthcare system. To me, it is very clear that the emergence of cloud computing has finally created the opportunity to truly address this daunting problem. Cloud-based solutions are the only viable option for effectively getting providers, patients and other key stakeholders online so that the necessary efficiencies find their way into the system.
To the rest of healthcare IT, however, it is not so clear, as witnessed by the lack of truly cloud-based companies in the marketplace.
Most of the large, established players in this industry continue to rely on the outdated client/server or older technologies, such as MUMPS. Some of these companies’ products trace their roots as far back as 1969. These companies and their software were built before the world wide web, before Facebook, the iPhone and iPad, salesforce.com – and even email, for God’s sake! There also exists a tremendous amount of confusion related to the morass of small, bootstrapped EMR companies, which number in the hundreds. People do not understand the difference between buying a monolithic single-purpose app to utilizing a robust, cloud-based platform approach.
This lack of understanding has made me realize that we need a better way to explain what the cloud has the power to do, and what true cloud-based technology even is. Easier said than done!
I was recently afforded a breakthrough, though unfortunately at the expense of an ancient treasure. Allow me to explain:
