I believe that meaningful use (MU) and the continued advances in technology will usher in a wave of disruptive innovations that will ultimately have a significant impact on healthcare costs and quality. MU sets the stage by expanding the definition of an EHR to include modular applications designed to create, maintain, and exchange a limited, standardized data set. Advances in technology like the concepts I’ve been sharing in recent posts, are beginning to interconnect providers in communities across the US. The convergence of these activities is leading to a new model that can be called Health 4.0.
Why Health 4.0? The success of Health 2.0 has given a common framework to define types of healthcare consumer applications. A quick Google search will return a simple definition of the Health “dot-oh” classes:
- Health 1.0 provided static content
- Health 2.0 enabled dynamic, social networking communities.
- Health 3.0 added commercial solutions centered on the patient.
- Health 4.0 is focused on coherence – tying it all together.
I believe that a new type of “coherent” EHR is possible that leverages the emerging modular applications defined by MU and the distributed and cloud computing technologies that I’ve described in previous posts. Let me explain.
I had previously discussed a technical concept built into the core of our architecture – the distributed patient object. This enables entities across a community to share patient-centric information in a private, social network. The network could include the patient, primary care provider, specialists, hospitals, and others focused on care delivery. It is similar in concept to a secure email thread shared between multiple people.
Building an EHR on distributed objects instead of a static database offers a new approach that enables the EHR to participate in a higher level of collaboration. Because the object captures patient information from across the care team, the EHR can provide a coherent view of the patient. This also becomes a natural means of exchanging information between care team members (orders, referrals, clinical summaries, etc.)
Envision a system where the patient is an active participant in the network. They can download a distributed client onto their home PC that connects to local monitoring equipment and allows them to update the care team. The object would capture local data and automatically send it to the monitoring center or to providers managing the care of the patient. Because of the object model, the patient information is natively incorporated into the EHR.
The concept of a patient (or their proxy) actively participating in the data model of a coherent, Health 4.0 EHR platform may have revolutionary impact on HIEs, EHRs, PHRs, and other markets by “tying it all together.” Because this is done in a very simple manner, based on the grid and SOA technologies that underlie the client-cloud model, and with the introduction of MU EHR modules, it can be brought to market at a price point well below most EHR models – which makes it a disruptive innovation. Of course, it doesn’t do what those systems do – so price comparisons are useless. But it does open up some exciting opportunities in the near future.
We’ll be demonstrating the prototype of our new Health 4.0 platform – called iNexx – at HIMSS. I hope you’ll stop by to see the concept in action.
