This appeared a little while ago.
Glaser reflects on decade of health IT
Posted on Jan 20, 2014
By Bernie Monegain, Editor
To say that John Glaser has had a front-row seat in the health IT arena over the past 10 years – and the 10 years before that – would be wrong. He’s been in the trenches, sleeves rolled up. Glaser has advocated for the adoption of EHRs through his work with CHIME, HIMSS, AMIA, the eHealth Initiative, Markle Foundation and before congressional committees. He also did a stint as adviser at the ONC. As CIO of Partners HealthCare in Boston, he guided the health system into the digital age – long before many other care providers across the country could even conceive the possibilities. Today, he continues his HIT work through these many channels also as CEO of the Health Services Business Unit of Siemens Healthcare.
We talked with Glaser recently about the vast industry change he has helped to achieve over the past decade or two, and also to consider the possibilities for the future.
Q. What have been the challenges and the biggest change in health IT?
A: Over this last decade, and probably the decade before that, there have been challenges that are consistent. Dealing with new technology is a consistent challenge, whether mobile now or Web in years gone by. Even within each organization, their engaging people, revamping processes, clinical, revenue cycle – all that stuff is a consistent challenge. Helping an organization sort of design its direction – where should we go, where should we put our resources, how do we monitor the environment, how do we make sure it’s all working out the way we thought it should.
A: Over this last decade, and probably the decade before that, there have been challenges that are consistent. Dealing with new technology is a consistent challenge, whether mobile now or Web in years gone by. Even within each organization, their engaging people, revamping processes, clinical, revenue cycle – all that stuff is a consistent challenge. Helping an organization sort of design its direction – where should we go, where should we put our resources, how do we monitor the environment, how do we make sure it’s all working out the way we thought it should.
I think there’s one factor that is materially different in the last 10 years, it’s the role of government in HIT. You and I go back before the creation of ONC under President Bush, and now we have enormous influence whether it’s through the meaningful requirements, or certification, or the focus on interoperability, health information exchange and the standards that go with that – more recently EHR safety issue and the reporting of errors. There’s still a conversation about should government regulate all that. Government has always had a strong hand in privacy and security with the administrative transactions.
I go back to the early days of CHIME, and engaging the federal government just wasn’t on the radar screen. Now it’s really on the radar screen at CHIME and HIMSS and AMIA and all those other folks.
Lots more here:
This is a very interesting interview. As I read I thought there were more than a few parallels to the way things have played out in Australia. Well worth a careful read.
David.
No comments:
Post a Comment