markjeee.com

Healthcare IT has been near the top of the U.S. political agenda since January 2009, when President Obama set a goal of making all of the nation’s health records computerized within five years. The administration poured in $19 billion (or $47 billion, depending on whose budget numbers you believe) from the federal stimulus to support electronic medical records adoption. There are a million reasons why this hasn’t caught on yet, not the least of which are consumers’ worries that insurers will get a hold of the data to discriminate against them, physicians’ adherence to tradition, and hospitals’ fears that they will lose data or somehow mess things up or damage patient care.

If the money spigot ever turns on to encourage massive adoption of electronic records, Microsoft is definitely positioned—along with competitor Google Health—to be ready to pounce. Microsoft has been methodically assembling a portfolio of software products that tackle all sorts of inefficiencies. One product seeks to help consumers and providers better share electronic records (HealthVault). Another aims to get all 65 or so proprietary health programs the average U.S. hospital has to talk to each other (Amalga). A third program (Amalga Life Sciences) seeks to get researchers who are drowning in genomic data to put it in a form that might be useful if the world ever shifts to personalized, genomic-based medicine.

... and also us who belongs in the startup category. :D

UPDATE: Anyone wanting to do something meaningful in this industry, just needs to focus on these particular lines:

“One of the things we think is critical to the success of health reform is to reform the way we pay for care,” McLemore says. “For a long time, we’ve paid for the volume of procedures done, not for the quality or value we get. There need to be changes to the way we reimburse providers, so they are not invested in doing more volume, but providing more quality.”

I think this is the overall trend towards the kind of industry, Healthcare wants to be in. The Innovator's Prescription book by Christensen discusses a bit on this idea.