HEALTHY ONLINE

IBM "cloud" computing - circa 1975 There is no self-respecting innovator in Health Information Technology (HIT) who has not spoken or written about the horrific state of Legacy EHR products, which are slowly but surely being deployed in more and more health care facilities as a result of Meaningful Use incentives and changing reimbursement models. A couple of months ago I saw an EMR in a small practice. They’ve been using it for 15 years and it was a DOS based system with the ubiquitous neon green text glaring on a black and sometimes blue background. Aha! That must be a Legacy EMR, and sure enough the doctor was looking to replace it with a more modern product, but which one should he get now? After all, the last thing you’d want is to have him buy yet another Legacy EMR. According to dictionary.com , a Legacy system is a “computer system or application program which continues to be used because of the cost of replacing or redesigning it and often despite its poor competitiv...

The year is 2018 and President Tofu is fortunate to have a majority in both houses of Congress. America elected President Tofu when it became weary of partisan politics and developed a taste for a President with no preconceived notions and fully capable of absorbing the flavors of whatever surrounds him at the moment; a pragmatic, businesslike President for tough and fast-changing times. American small businesses are still hurting from the lingering effects of the Great Recession, but its larger bastions of business savvy are thriving in a booming global economy bringing cheap products to the impoverished masses armed with $5 cell phones, $10 netbooks and empowered by a Khan universal education system (the other Khan, not Genghis). Many Americans are also benefiting from this expansion in some ways. For example, after the 2016 passage of the historical and liberating Student Protection and Affordable Education Act (SPAEA), many parents decided to take advantage of the Khan system, now ...