Medical records and the new playing field
Recently one of our clients was looking to build a product in the healthcare domain which involved accessing and modifying medical records. As a part of the initial engagement I did a comparative study of a few EHRs, EMRs and PHRs. There are just too many of them now, each targeted towards a market of their choice. What impressed me is the amount of integrations that are possible with some of these systems. The good ones come with drug database, insurance claims process, ePrescription integration and a host of others. However, what really struck me is the fact that very few of them use modern application delivery methods. If fact a lot of them are still stuck at desktop application/client-server mode. Some have the ASP model. Few, very few have made the transition towards SaaS. Needless to say, these systems need to head towards the direction the world is headed.
The electronic revolution in medical instruments have been going on for a very long time now. But the rise in the use consumer medical instruments is pretty recent. Today we have blood glucose and pressure monitors in almost every homes. And this got me thinking – how cool it would be if these equipments can automatically send the measurements to say, the PHRs. Yes, we are looking at a new playing field if you are thinking what I’ve been thinking.
