OSEHRA: The Coming Health Care Singularity

...Meaningful Use Stage 2 includes key provisions for patient engagement and access to data held by physicians and institutions. Labs will soon be required to report results directly to patients. Patient-run health CO-OPs like the Minuteman Health Initiative in MA have incentives to install a new breed of IT. OSEHRA is mobilizing significant VA / DoD investment in open source EHR technology. Meanwhile, although patients would be eager to engage their physicians, the inflexibility of the current EHR technology, security and business model makes this seem impractical and uncertain.

Healthcare singularity is now on the horizon and will happen rapidly as patients and physicians begin to interact outside the institutional EHR context. It will first become evident in situations where empowered patients have access to experienced advocates and significant social networks. It will be attended by physicians who choose open source and cloud information technology that, by design, is equally accessible to all the members of the care team. Where will you spot it first?...