What Does Meaningful Use Mean to You?

One of my readers made some interesting observations about what meaningful use in a doctors office meant. It’s interesting how different people can look at the term meaningful use.

Without getting into semantics, to me the words “meaingful use” means “a way to get government money.”

Maybe I’m just a little too practical Seriously though, would we be talking about meaningful use of an EMR if it weren’t for the government money? NO. We’d be talking about all the benefits of an EMR. The use of the EMR would just be a function of obtaining those benefits. I love how a bit of money can do all sorts of funky things.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

1 Comment

  • Meaningful use should mean being able to accomplish my tasks without having to struggle with the interface. Not only is this definition eminently measurable (here at Electronic Ink we do it for clients every day), it can also be accomplished before or after development. Not surprisingly, a design that accounts for “meaningful use” before development requires much less “customization” by developers. Note that my definition has nothing to do with a checklist of features!

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