Working in the intersection of Medicine and Internet

I conceive the near future of medical care as a connected, distributed space where only a few persons have direct contact with the patient, and a number of consultants examine the relevant data and make recommendations. The eHealth paradigm will make medicine ultra-specialized, a bit de-personalized, fast and cheap.

The current e-business models are taking a while to enter the very conservative health field, but they will enter for good, with great impact and making big bucks for the pioneers. (us). For instance:

– Telemarkets, where the patient demands service offers from all the possible providers;
– Auctions, where medical services/hours are sold to the best buyer:
– Social Networks, where doctors and consultants are qualified by colleagues, online, worldwide
– Expert Systems
– Advertising following the PPC and related models, using the doctor-specific channels to allow pharmaceutical ethical advertising.

A comparison of different EMR systems

From request from a client, I presented a paper at the Latin American Congress of Medical Informatics, INFOLAC, here in Buenos Aires. He produces an EMR product with some state-of-the-art features, and he wanted to introduce the subject into the med-info communitiy.

In parallel, I was looking for a product that I could use for remote consultation pacients. So, finally both lines converged and I had resources to do a quite complete research on the subject.

I was surprised to learn that, in spite of being in 2008 at full IT speed, most hospitals in Latin America and other places still keep medical records only in paper.

There is a nice opportunity to advance in this matter. I will soon publish the results of my survey on Web available EMR systems.