John Glaser, VP and CIO at Partners HealthCare System has more details on US Stimulus Package regarding Health care IT:
* Provision of $40,000 in incentives (beginning in 2011) for physicians to use an EHR
* Creation of HIT Extension Programs that would facilitate regional adoption efforts
* Provision of funds to states to coordinate and promote interoperable EHRs
* Development of education programs to train clinicians in EHR use and increase the number of health care IT professionals
* Creation of HIT grant and loan programs
* Acceleration of the construction of the National Health Information Network (NHIN)
As someone who recently moved into health care IT from traditional software engineering, I can see where training will definitely need to play a big role. However, one the issue that I encountered the most is working with domain knowledge experts. Take pharmacist for an example. They believed they have much better knowledge regarding drugs yet they have no clue when it comes to data structure and how better to store that information. In order to put the health care IT into good use, the usage of some sort of reporting system is inevitable. As a result, I found myself often try to bridge the gap with the subject experts rather than working on the technology aspect of the problem.
As a whole, the health care IT is definitely gaining momentum. Even Cramer is on board with health care IT.
Companies such as Allscript, Epic, and Cerner will be garnering much more attention in the upcoming days.