I feel my company has truly been a pioneer in the development of what is now called electronic health records (EHR)! Having invested a lot money into the research/development of our WritePad EHR software over the past 16 years, I have been waiting and waiting for doctors to adopt this technology. The time looks to be ripe.
Finally, there is movement on true governmental certification. I had followed with interest CCHIT certification over the past few years and while there were some benefits in its intent, I always thought that certification did not make sense for EHRs to take off in the U.S. If an EHR is not usuable, then it is worthless! CCHIT did not have "Meaningful Use" criteria. This is what I have written about in my many articles on Health Information Technology (HIT) that has been published in various magazines over the years. Thus, my company, Addison Health Systems, Inc. (AHS) did not spend the $$$$$ to get CCHIT certification for our WritePad system. WOW! That was a great decision in that now that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) governmental certification is the is considered the "true" certification.
Well, that is why as soon as EHRs were allowed to submit an application for certification, we did!!! WritePad will be certified by the end of October!!!
I will be posting advice, comments as well as linking and inviting experts in various HIT roles on this blog from time to time. I will review people who will want to post to see if they offer what I think to be valuable information to the thousands of clients/friends AHS has.
