EVERYONE IN healthcare IT was talking about the tipping point when New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell published his book by the same name in 2009.

Only recently has the talk petered out. News alert: The tipping point has arrived. More heavy lifting ahead.
Former Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt put some of the cornerstones in place when he built the American Health Information Community, or AHIC, now called the National eHealth Collaborative. The government established the Office of the National Coordinator for healthcare information technology (ONC) and the Certification Commission for Healthcare IT (CCHIT).

That constitutes a foundation, but there’s so much yet to do.

Uptake of healthcare IT has been slow, and while there are many serious efforts at interoperability and data exchange, which most experts say will provide the real value of digital records, the connections remain regional.
The effort that needs to be put forth now is in solving problems, such as:

n How will we connect those small exchanges into one countrywide network so that records from California can be accessed by a hospital in Maine? And how soon can the nationwide network become reality?

n How will we ensure privacy and prevent the associated risk of medical identity theft?

n How will we distribute the money for healthcare IT – $20B in the proposed stimulus package – to make it most effective? No one expects to throw money at a problem and have it resolve itself. CIOs and systems analysts always say “deal with the processes first, then technology.”