Consider the Healthcare Vertical, as compared to Banking, Finance, Insurance, Manufacturing and pretty much, any other vertical!
In Banking, branch banking, central office banking, check clearing, wire transfers across great distances are all digital and consumers do loads of Internet banking. There are even banks that are completely digital and electronic only! Straight-Through Processing (STP) makes instantaneous check clearing possible these days!
Consider Finance - Transactions, accounting and all aspects of strategy and operations are all digital and computerized. Stock Exchanges around the globe and sale and purchases of financial instruments around the globe have been computerized for decades now! Credit cards are so digital, ubiquitous, and electronic that you don't even think about them twice!
Consider Insurance - Policy Underwriting is automated with rules engines and claims processing - you can do pretty much the entire claim filing and clearing without talking to one single person in the company, all through the web and using computers at both ends!
Similar is the case with manufacturing, with resource planning, to automated assembly lines to process control in continuous flow manufacturing.
Now, consider Healthcare! Even allowing for the fact that you are dealing very sensitive, personal, privacy and quality of care issues when you deal with people's healthcare records, ailments and diseases, there is absolutely no reason for the accounting part of healthcare to be in the 19th Century with scribbles on paper! This is like the high water has suddenly discovered a lower area that it can flow to and when it flows it will be a flood!
This is why Healthcare IT will be the next huge growth industry! IBM and Sam Palmisano, CEO of IBM, understand this in their gut and are positioning themselves for this Gold Rush!
The very act of making basic records digital will be the catalyst that sets this juggernaut in motion. If you are not part of this road roller, you will become part of the road!
The healthcare advocates are quickly running out of credible excuses on why 30% or all healthcare costs are wasted on repetitive, useless, clerical labor (even if they are offshored for saving labor costs), on why the same information needs to be entered manually into 30 different forms!
This is not to talk about making computers aid in diganosis and mining past healthcare data for getting insights into a patient's health quickly! Genetic research is making tremendous advances in identifying genetic patterns that indicate propensity for this disease or that earlier in the diagnostic cycle.
Of course, there is the immense danger that all of this information may favor insurance companies and shortchange the end consumer by being refused coverage. But these kinds of issues can easily be addressed with legislation, laws and compliance efforts! They are not technology roadblocks.
It is coming and it is going to run over parties in the healthcare system not ready for it!
If the rate of change outside your organization is greater than the rate of change inside your organization, the end is in sight. - Jack Welch
Electronic health records(EHR) was driven as a quality intiative but couldn't get traction until it was presented as a compelling business case..Studies were published demonstrating billions of dollars of savings while discussions about EHR'S were being discussed..If we look at the implementation of RHIO'S throughout the United States we will find out that they closed up because of financial support or put in another way that the savings could not support the investment..When HIPAA was instituted we saw administrative costs escalate to support the infastructure without any savings..I believe that will the same case with EHR implementations..Hospitals will need to hire more compliance people,lawyers,data integrity technicians and many more "new" fields to maintain the infastructure..so after we all spend our stimulus money to get started watch the cost of heath care continue to rise..
Nice post, Nari. Since I respectfully disagree with what you've said here, I've responded to your blog post over at mine:
http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/healthcare/2009/04/why_healthcare_it_is_in_the_state_that_its_in.php