How far behind the tech curve is health care?
It's easier to see from just a glimpse at the annual HIMSS show, now taking place in Chicago.
It's a who's who of who was. Companies like Wyse Technology, marginalized years ago in the general market, have big booths at this show, and are very viable players.
Or consider the relationship between Dell and Perot Systems, the latter another HIMSS regular. Dell is hoping Perot can get it a taste of all that stimulus money, but understand that it's Perot that is the lead dog here, Dell the follower.
General Electric is far from a mainline technology supplier, but GE Healthcare is a major force at HIMSS, and thus it is making headlines this week:
- A wireless infrastructure contract with Methodist Healthcare of San Antonio. Contracts are still big news at this show.
- A deal with the CDC to include public health alerts in Electronic Medical Records.
Technically this last is not a difficult deal, no more difficult than running an RSS feed. But the press release has enough buzzwords, brand names, and breathless self-congratulation for a Moon Shot.
The recession and the Obama Stimulus have made all this newsworthy, in a general sense, but somewhere amid the ballyhoo it needs to be understood that these are old dogs doing old tricks.
The big differences lie in how critical the information being moved about is, and thus how many regulatory hurdles must be cleared to get anything done.
The question is how many hurdles can we afford to clear out of the way to get the benefits of an up-to-date medical computing infrastructure.