Interoperability Still Key to Effective Electronic Medical Records

Lora Bentley | IT Business Edge | May 5, 2011
Lora Bentley spoke with Rick Kneipper, co-founder and chief strategy officer forAnthelio Healthcare, about the state of electronic medical records adoption.

Bentley: Electronic medical records have been a top priority for awhile now, but it seems that doctors and hospitals are not adopting them as quickly as the government would like. Is that true?

Kneipper: In the health care industry, I think it’s pretty generally agreed that electronic medical records (EMRs) are indeed the real secret to how we’re going to improve health care quality, efficiency, costs, etc. President Bush said a long time ago that we were going to have them in 10 years. Ten years have come and gone and we don’t have them. Then President Obama said we would have them in five years. We’ll see. That’s the good news. The bad news is there is a significant amount of doubt about the current direction of EMRs and the current types of EMRs that we have.