I remember when I first started blogging about EMR and health care IT about 5.5 years ago, I searched out whatever EMR and healthcare IT blogs I could find. The first three blogs that I can remember finding (and loving) were Neil Versel’s blog, Shahid’s Healthcare IT blog and Will Weider’s Candid CIO blog.

I loved reading Neil Versel’s blog because he was actually a professional journalist in the healthcare IT arena. I learned a lot by watching what he did. In fact, I think some of my writing style came from reading his blog. Along with his blog, Shahid provided HITsphere where I could see the posts from other bloggers. Plus, in the early days the traffic from HITsphere to my blog was really great. It’s hard to have a blog that no one reads. I loved the Candid CIO. Partially because the writing was so good and Will is a really smart guy. Partially because I was completely intrigued that the CIO of an organization was blogging. At that time I think I also aspired to be a CIO like Will. Funny how life changes and I prefer to be a blogger now. I’ll leave the stress of CIO to Will. I’m happy to say that all three of these bloggers are still wielding their blogging sword and I still enjoy reading their work.

Needless to say, the EMR and Healthcare IT blogging community has gotten much larger than it was 5.5 years ago when I started. Like many things, with that growth a lot of things have changed. Some for the good and some for the bad. One thing that I miss is all the interaction we use to have as bloggers. Certainly some of that interaction has moved to Twitter and other social media sites. However, I wish we had more interactions with bloggers like we use to do when there were only 5 of us out there.

I personally like to call it blog sparring. Basically, you take someone else’s post and provide the opposing perspective or at least you add to the conversation that they started. I love these types of interactions with other bloggers. Plus, I love the deep dive into a specific topic that happens when you do this type of blogging. As a reader, I think it’s fun to read the various blogger’s perspective on the topic.

So, on that note, I’m going to make the next week, Blog Sparring Week. I’m going to find interesting posts from some of the best EMR and healthcare IT bloggers out there and I’m going to write a post in response or in addition to the comments they made. This way, you’ll get to know some of the other interesting bloggers out there, but you’ll also get the chance to read some interesting in depth commentary.

Hopefully, the bloggers I write about will join in on the fun by either replying to my blog posts or blog sparring with other EMR and healthcare IT bloggers.

If you have posts you think I should consider, let me know in the comments.

One area of the HITECH act that I haven’t heard discussed nearly enough is the Regional Extension Centers. Sure, I’ve heard them mentioned in passing plenty of times. However, I haven’t heard any real good information on what’s being done to make sure that these RECs are going to be successful in their goal of 100,000 providers becoming meaningful users of EHR’s by 2011.

Yes, that’s a pretty big hairy goal. Especially considering the EHR adoption rates up until today. Not to mention, these Regional Extension Centers (RECs) are going to have to find a way to effectively help doctors sort through the 300+ EHR vendors that are on the market with more coming out every day. This is not an easy task to accomplish and will require a lot of great tools to do it effectively.

Shahid, The Healthcare IT guy, created an interesting post about the Regional Extension Centers where he talks about the challenge these RECs will have to “offer unbiased advice on the systems and services best suited to enable the priority primary-care providers to become meaningful users of EHRs. Regional Centers will avoid entering into business arrangements creating an actual or apparent conflict of interest.”

Can you imagine the lobbying that will happen by the big EMR vendors towards these RECs? The reality is, who else can these RECs turn to for “unbiased” advice on EMR selection and implementation? I can’t imagine that the people behind these RECs just want to be a marketing front for EMR vendors who pay to lobby them. Seems pretty clear that you have to be really careful where you get your information.

Of course, this is just one of the many challenges that these RECs face. Personally, I hope that the RECs are incredibly successful and do a great job assisting doctors to find and implement the right EHR. However, if these RECs aren’t careful, they can actually have the opposite effect on EHR adoption.

If people have more information on these RECs, I’d love to hear more. I’m interested in doing what I can to help these RECs succeed.

I was reading the Healthcare IT guy’s blog and saw a post about a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Healthcare IT conference going on in Houston July 31, 2009 – August 2, 2009. According to Shahid, one of the most outspoken proponents of FOSS in Healthcare, Fred Trotter, is one of the people behind the unconference.

I’m not sure why they chose Houston for this conference. I think Las Vegas would have been a much better choice, but yes I am completely biased because I live in Las Vegas. All of that said, I love what Fred Trotter is trying to do and so I’m excited to promote those who are pushing for free emr and open source emr (see also our Open Source and Free EMR list on our wiki).

You can go and register for the event at the incredibly reasonable rate of $60 if you do it before March 1.

My hope is that Fred also embraces some great streaming video technology such as UStream and makes the conference proceedings available to those of us that can’t make it to Houston. I know I’d tune in and I’d even be willing to embed the UStream video on this blog for others to attend as well. Only challenge might be the fact that it’s an unconference. Not sure the format they’ll be using and if that will translate well to video.