911 Medical ID Blog

A new article puts the blame for the slow pace of electronic medical records adoption squarely on the patient.  The article, published on MSNBC and filed from last week’s 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, says the culprit in the delay of digitizing the U.S. healthcare system is lack of demand from the public.  Comments on the subject came from experts attending CES to view the latest healthcare gadgets.

Doctors and medical technology executives said Saturday that the biggest hurdle to computerizing health care isn’t tradition or Luddism or bureaucracy — it’s the reluctance of consumers to sign on. Without consumer demand, manufacturers and administrators can’t justify the upfront cost of digitizing patients’ cases and securing their records because they can’t be reasonably sure they’ll recover their investment.

“The health care dollar has really been stretched to the extreme in the United States,” Deepak Ayyagari, director of technology programs for Sharp Laboratories of America, said during a daylong conference on digital health at the annual International Consumer Electronics Show. “We can’t invest further in all the things required because we don’t see a market.”

We at the 911 Family of Products, of course, counter that having a product like the 911 Medical ID Card can make consumer’s lives easier as medical professionals transition to digital records.  The goal of the card is to interface with all major doctor’s office record keeping systems.  As new EMR systems come online, the card will automatically be updated, at no charge to the cardholder.  This allows the user to easily keep up to date and in charge of their health information

To read the rest of the article on MSNBC, click here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 at 1:41 pm and is filed under Electronic Medical Records News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.