Welcome to EMR and HIPAA

The world is only beginning to see the far-reaching effects of Internet expansion in business and in every part of life, Kevin Rollins told the Center for eBusiness� advisory board.

BYU Center for eBusiness Newsletter

Kevin Rollins, CEO of Dell, talked to the BYU Center for eBusiness advisory board. I am a BYU fanatic. (If you don’t believe me then take a look at my BYU Sports Blog) The center for eBusiness is especially interesting to me. I think it’s a great idea for a University.

You can imagine my surprise when Kevin Rollins talked about the impact of EMR and RHIOs. Here’s an excerpt from the newsletter:

He also discussed some emerging Internet advances that are positively changing the medical field. Making health records available online will help medical professionals record treatments and assessments; it will allow doctors and facilities separated by thousands of miles to access patients� health records. Patients in turn will be able to compare and contrast hospitals and health care facilities across the nation to find the best fit for their needs. Currently, these advances are only being tested in highly populated cities. But expansion is both necessary and imminent.

�We just need more people experimenting and moving ahead on this so we have confidence that it will work,� he said.

I’m glad that someone understands the importance of EMR and RHIOs. One problem I see is that everyone is interested in the idea of EMR and exchanging patient records. However, not nearly enough doctors are implementing them. In an economic system, there has to be motivation for doctors to implement an EMR. Right now I don’t think those motivations are persuasive enough for doctors to implement an EMR. I hope this can change over time.