Barack Obama Puts Cronyism Above Cybersecurity

...Thanks in significant part to President Obama’s $19 billion stimulus subsidy program for health-data vendors, Epic is now the dominant EMR player in the US health IT market...As I’ve reported previously, Epic employees donated nearly $1 million to political parties and candidates between 1995 and 2012 — 82 percent of it to Democrats...

Michelle MalkinFaulkner received a plum appointment to a federal health IT policy panel in 2011. Brandon Glenn of Medical Economics noted that “it’s not a coincidence” that Epic’s sales “have been skyrocketing in recent years, up to $1.2 billion in 2011, double what they were four years prior.” Stunningly, Epic “has the edge” on the gargantuan Pentagon medical-records contract, The Washington Post reported Monday. This favored status comes despite myriad complaints about the interoperability, usability and security of Epic’s closed-end proprietary software.

Just last week, the UCLA Health system run by Epic suffered a cyber attack affecting up to 4.5 million personal and medical records, including Social Security numbers, Medicare and health-plan identifiers, birthdays and physical addresses...The university’s top doctors and medical staff market their informatics expertise and consulting services to other Epic customers “to ensure the successful implementation and optimization of your Epic EHR.” Will they be sharing their experience having to mop up the post-cyber-attack mess involving their Epic infrastructure?...