Countdown to Digital TV... Is it Time to Think about Digital Medicine?
February 17, 2009 marks the end of analog television broadcasting. TV sets without digital signals will go dark. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, broadcast stations will provide daily public service announcements to help educate consumers about the deadline. Last year, broadcasters and cable operators committed $900 million, in donated airtime, to explain the digital transition. Congress also set aside $1.5 billion to help consumers pay to convert their old TVs so they can receive digital signals.
With all the money, time and effort being spent on the digital television conversion, I wonder why the U.S. healthcare system hasn't committed to this same kind of full-scale digital deployment to ensure widespread access to medical data, health records, and treatment effectiveness knowledge?
Perhaps the digital television conversion is a good analogy for how best to update the American healthcare system. Some progress has been made, but the momentum is lagging. Do we need to have a similar deadline imposed for universally available digital health records? Does the deadline need to be accompanied by public service announcements, mandated software and hardware modifications, and Congress-appropriated transition resources?
Here are steps that are already underway.
- The Office of the National Health Information Technology Coordinator, under President Bush, set a goal of achieving widespread deployment of health information technology by 2014.
- The 2005 Wired for Health Care Quality Act authorized $275 million over two years to assist providers in adopting interoperable information technology.
- Google and Microsoft have both announced plans to create the platform for the personal health record (PHR), and WebMD is pushing to become the portal for PHR because of its existing investment in web-based health information.
- All of the major hospital information systems vendors offer some form of electronic medical record—with the added complexity of incompatibility across competing systems.
While this is a good start, much more is needed for our country's healthcare system to become a "true" system. As a healthcare marketer, look at how your facility or healthcare system is poised to handle this issue and then make recommendations accordingly.
Everyone in healthcare (providers, insurance companies, and patients) has much to gain or lose in this situation. I think it's time to set deadlines, real deadlines, with consequences. If the American public can get on board and convert to digital TV, surely we can pull off digital medicine!
What do you think is the solution? I welcome your thoughts and comments.
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