Something is rotten in the United States?

This is worth a read as a vision of the future - Denmark Leads the Way in Digital Care

I spent several weeks in Denmark looking at their health information technology both from the perspective at the point of care, and then from the top, looking down. The experience felt similar to a trip to Fantasy Island. Our healthcare policy makers are wise to learn what does and does not work, and why that is.
Why do clinicians and patients generally love and embrace their information technology in Denmark, and how was this accomplished at a fraction of the cost that is anticipated in the United States?

Happy New Year!

While I have not had much time to blog this past month, I have not been idle. There has never been a busier time at SOAPware, Inc. Even though we have not yet released SOAPware 2010, there are just under 200 sites using the beta with good reports. In actuality, the beta of 2010 is more stable and has far better performance than SOAPware 2008. We are determined for the releases of 2010 to have the speed and stability that has been our tradition up until 2007. At that time we entered a rapid development mode so that we would be prepared for the future (including certification for meaningful use). The rapid development left us with a backlog of performance and stability issues that we are just now moving beyond. Even faced with the delayed product release, there were more new SOAPware licenses sold in December than in the previous 6 months. As the meaningful use requirements for medical practices to receive stimulus funds have become more solidified, the interest in our approach at SOAPware has increased greatly. In fact, we have experienced such growth at the end of 2009 that we are now in the process of greatly expanding the SOAPware team over the next few weeks.
Personally, my time and focus this month, and for the next few months, is on how to best address the following:
• Data reporting tools
• Patient access to their medical records
• Interoperability or the ability to electronically share information
• Practical and efficient implementation tools that make all of this possible in medical practices having limited resources.
The current solutions in this industry to accomplish the above tasks are very limited and have usually proven to be too cumbersome and expensive even if they are available. We have been diligently addressing these challenges in fashions that we expect will leap frog the current approaches. Hopefully, by the end of Q1 of 2010, we can start to announce and make public more of the specifics.