Microsoft Surface dives into mHealth, telehealth tablet market

February 26, 2013 | by

“Not only Lync but Skype as well are becoming fairly predominant platforms for what I call ‘commodity’ telemedicine and telehealth services,” Dr. Bill Crounse, Microsoft’s senior director for worldwide health, told Pulse IT Magazine during a promotional visit to Australia. “We are seeing amazing progress at an institutional level, with people understanding and mapping out where are their patients coming from and how far are they travelling. How can we leverage this technology to better serve that population [of] patients who are being asked to travel three hours across town for a snippet of information or reassurance, when in fact this technology can be applied.”

It’s a good point, but as EHR Intelligence goes on to point out: ‘In contrast to the iPad mini, which fits neatly into lab coat pockets and has the advantage of millions of apps in the mature Apple ecosystem, the Surface Pro is a bulkier product, weighing in at two pounds and saddled with an $899 price tag. In the era of bring your own device (BYOD) healthcare, Microsoft faces an uphill battle when it comes to attracting individual physicians looking to pick up a supplementary device for their office work.’ EHR Intelligence item: Microsoft Surface dives into mHealth, telehealth tablet market.

Revealed: Hospital EHRs lobbied for stimulus funding (US)

February 20, 2013 | by

Man Bites Dog! The New York Times just discovered that not only did large EHR companies lobby for the health records mandatories that were part of the 2009 Federal ‘stimulus’ bill–along with ‘Meaningful Use’ subsidies–but also they also won big in hospital sales. This article focuses on Cerner, Allscripts (which bought Eclipsys) and Epic, and the 60% + gain these companies have made in sales since. It touches on the sticking point of non-interoperability, but not at all on the chaos at the practice level where the Big Three (nor the unmentioned GE Centricity) largely do not play. Here is where 600-odd companies, many of them offshored IT outfits, also around 2005 started to peddle various EHRs which were first software, now cloud-based. It took off after 2009 as well, to primary care doctors worried about Federal regulations–or missing out on years of subsidies and MU payouts. (more…)