State could challenge Microsoft’s de-facto monopoly on provider-to-provider database

Over at The Lund Report, Raymond Rendleman provides an update on electronic health records:

February 6, 2012 — Technology is changing so quickly that state officials and advocates overseeing more streamlined transfers of health information in Oregon are scrambling to keep up.

2010 may not seem like that long ago, but from the perspective of a computer, it’s already the Stone Age. That was the year that the Community Leadership Council of the Archimedes Movement [We Can Do Better] made recommendations on the state’s Strategic Plan for Health Information Exchange, which the federal government approved a few months later.

The Oregon Health Authority, through the Office of Health IT, has been developing the necessary policy, selecting a technology vendor and planning the implementation of the initial services with a focus on provider-to-provider communication to launch this spring. Although patients will be able to select a personal health record as Archimedes outlined, the Google product they referenced in recommendations went defunct.

Read the whole story at The Lund Report.