One day when browsing through some different EMR related websites I ran across HIMSS’s EMR Selection Toolkit. I was of course intrigued by the title since I’d heard so many good things about HIMSS and the conference that they hold. Granted it is a conference and prone to have faults, but overall I’d heard good reviews about it. I also have to thank that conference for introducing me to SensibleVision and biometric facial recognition. They are fantastic!

The EMR Selection toolkit offered the following:

The HIMSS Ambulatory EHR Selector can help you make a well-informed choice. The Selector is an on-line database of EHR products and vendors, comparing more than 375 important characteristics, including:

-Practice size
-Specialties using the product
-Software pricing
-Contract details

-Product features and functions
-Regulatory compliance
-Training and support

The HIMSS Ambulatory EHR Selector is offered to individual physician practices for an annual subscription fee of $149.

I thought that might be a nice offer until I looked on the right side of the screen. It said it had 34 available products to search. Today when writing this post I went back and now they only have 31 products to choose from. I’m not sure how this works, but I’m amazed that a group like HIMMS can only profile 31 EMR products. That is absolutely crazy. I will admit that they do have a number of good choices, but 31 seems so narrow considering all the great EMR systems out there.

Sounds like an interesting business model for me. I’ll review the characteristics of 31 EMR systems and then charge you $100 to search my review. I’d be saving doctors $49. I might just have to do that. On second thought, what if I review 31 systems and then let you decide what the information I give is worth. I’m pretty sure most doctors have $149 in their budget to save them from being stuck with the jabba the hut EMR’s of the world.