• Listen Live NOW!
  • On Demand
  • Ways to Listen
  • All Shows
    • Radio Shows
      • 1st Talk Compliance
      • FINN Voices
      • Harlow on Healthcare
      • Healthcare De Jure
      • Healthcare IT Today
      • Healthcare Upside/Down
      • Health UnaBASHEd
      • Payment Matters
      • PopHealth Week
      • The Incrementalist
      • The Scope with Dr. K
      • The Tate Chronicles
      • The Virtual Shift
      • This Just In Radio Show
      • Trending NOW
      • Value-Based Care Insights
    • Podcast Shows
      • 4sight Health Roundup
      • Ambulatory Healthcare Today
      • AMCP Podcast Series – Listen Up
      • Ask the Educator
      • Beyond the Needle
      • Conversations on Health Care
      • Healthcare Changemakers
      • Healthcare Rap
      • Healthcare Mixtape
      • HealthLaw HotSpot
      • Hello Healthcare Podcast
      • The Brain Trust
      • The Digital Patient
      • The Handoff
    • Monthly Podcast Shows
      • Follow the Medical Record
      • How I Transformed This
      • Life-Centered Health Care
      • Paving the Path
      • Tell Me Where IT Hurts
      • The Dish on Health IT
      • The Healthusiasm Podcast
      • Trauma-Informed Life
      • Voices of Change
      • Voices of Self Funding
      • What Consumers Want
      • What’s My Tagline
  • Playlists
  • NursesNOW
    • Nursing News
      • Organizations
      • Podcasts
  • Request Media Kit
  • Contact Us
Event Calendar
HealthcareNOWradio.comHealthcareNOWradio.com
  • Listen Live NOW!
  • On Demand
  • Ways to Listen
  • All Shows
    • Radio Shows
      • 1st Talk Compliance
      • FINN Voices
      • Harlow on Healthcare
      • Healthcare De Jure
      • Healthcare IT Today
      • Healthcare Upside/Down
      • Health UnaBASHEd
      • Payment Matters
      • PopHealth Week
      • The Incrementalist
      • The Scope with Dr. K
      • The Tate Chronicles
      • The Virtual Shift
      • This Just In Radio Show
      • Trending NOW
      • Value-Based Care Insights
    • Podcast Shows
      • 4sight Health Roundup
      • Ambulatory Healthcare Today
      • AMCP Podcast Series – Listen Up
      • Ask the Educator
      • Beyond the Needle
      • Conversations on Health Care
      • Healthcare Changemakers
      • Healthcare Rap
      • Healthcare Mixtape
      • HealthLaw HotSpot
      • Hello Healthcare Podcast
      • The Brain Trust
      • The Digital Patient
      • The Handoff
    • Monthly Podcast Shows
      • Follow the Medical Record
      • How I Transformed This
      • Life-Centered Health Care
      • Paving the Path
      • Tell Me Where IT Hurts
      • The Dish on Health IT
      • The Healthusiasm Podcast
      • Trauma-Informed Life
      • Voices of Change
      • Voices of Self Funding
      • What Consumers Want
      • What’s My Tagline
  • Playlists
  • NursesNOW
    • Nursing News
      • Organizations
      • Podcasts
  • Request Media Kit
  • Contact Us

Making a Difference

Jun 22, 2016 | Posted by Industry Expert | Health Innovation, Health IT, HIT Feed |

John HalamkaNow available on demand, Dr. Halamka discussing interoperability with Matt Fisher on Healthcare de Jure.

Listen On Demand

By John Halamka, MD
Twitter: @jhalamka

When my father died 3 years ago, my comments at his funeral noted that the greatest aspiration any of us can have is to make a difference in the world. My father’s life made a difference.

I’m always self critical and analyzing my own life. I moved to Boston 20 years ago this month. In those 20 years of service to BIDMC, Harvard, numerous federal organizations, international governments, and industry, I’m hopeful that I’ve laid a foundation for 20 more years of trying to make a difference. It’s hard to forecast the best path to have an impact on the healthcare ecosystem, but I can try.

The past 5 years belonged to government – with $34 billion spent on healthcare IT as a result of HITECH, the Meaningful Use program accomplished the goal of moving clinician practices and hospitals from paper to digital systems. Although many challenges remain – improving workflow, enhancing quality/safety, and ensuring usability, the basic platform on which we can build future innovation has been created.

The government will continue to be very a important factor, especially CMS, setting payment policy that will impact the behavior of all stakeholders. However, I believe the era of prescriptive government direction of the IT agenda has ended. Provider organizations are begging for an outcomes focus, instead of a process focus.

Where will the next innovations come from?

How about the large incumbent HIT vendors? Despite rumors to the contrary our major healthcare IT vendors are well meaning and not spending their time information blocking. They are devoting their resources to creating software which adheres to the thousands of pages of regulations introduced over the past few years. One major vendor noted that their programming staff is already booked for the next 32 months just to ensure compliance with existing regulations. The small amount of free bandwidth that incumbent vendors had reserved for innovation has been co-opted by regulation.

How about startups or high tech companies that have a startup mindset? Startups, such as those making population health/care management, decision support, and consumer facing apps likely have more time to focus on innovation than incumbent EHR vendors maintaining certified EHRs. Many of these startups lack domain expertise in healthcare processes, so they may not produce the products and services the marketplace really needs. However, that’s ok, since out of many failures often comes one great success. I think we need to watch companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Salesforce for important healthcare innovations.

How about provider organizations? Some academic healthcare systems have dedicated innovation resources and they will continue to lead important work. However, provider organizations are faced with the compliance/enforcement side of the same regulatory expansion that is consuming the incumbent vendors. Most provider organizations will devote 100% of their IT resources to operations and compliance.

So, it’s an edgy prediction, but I believe the next 5 years of healthcare IT innovation will belong to the private sector, to companies we’ve not yet heard of and companies outside the usual healthcare IT mainstream. The incumbent vendors may be able to crowdsource and leverage the resources of these innovators, as Athena will do with the More Disruption Please program and Epic will do with its app store.

At BIDMC, we’ve launched our own crowdsourcing program and we’re increasingly dedicating resources to innovation. We’ll continue our collaboration with numerous private sector companies, serving as a learning lab to test new ideas.

In my next 20 years, I hope to oversee innovative work on social networking communication applications, patient-facing mobile applications, population health analytics with workflow tools, and cloud-based healthcare IT services. I turned 54 this month. I’m hoping at 74 that I can reflect on 40 years in New England and say that my efforts have made a difference.

John D. Halamka, MD, MS, is Chief Information Officer of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Chairman of the New England Healthcare Exchange Network (NEHEN), Member of the HIT Standards Committee, a full Professor at Harvard Medical School, and a practicing Emergency Physician. This article was originally published in his blog Life as a Healthcare CIO and is reprinted here with permission.

Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on linkedin
Linkedin
Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on pinterest
Pinterest
Share on reddit
Reddit
Share on email
Email
Share this...
Tags: InnovationJohn Halamka MD

Radio for the Healthcare Industry

No HTML5 audio playback capabilities for this browser. Use Chrome Browser!

Categories

Follow Us on Twitter

My Tweets

About HealthcareNOWRadio.com

HealthcareNOWradio.com is an Internet radio station operated and produced as part of Answers Media Network. The station offers interviews, and commentary from industry leaders in healthcare and health information technology, as well as originally produced programming hosted by industry leaders. Listen on any device 24/7. You can also subscribe to get notification when a new show airs.

Sign Up for Our e-News Digest

Get notified when a new show airs or when your favorites are available as podcasts. Sign up here.

Our News Media Site

Connect with Us

Contact Us

Contact a Host

Media Kit

Listening Guide

 

Follow Us

Our Radio Hosts on Twitter

Tweets by @HCNowRadio

©2023 Answers Media Company, LLC

  • HealthcareNOW Radio Media Kit
  • Contact Us
  • Our Privacy Policy
  • Our Guests and Recording Policy
Prev Next