Medical News Today Article
The disturbing part about this article is the government is the catalyst needed to make these health service providers further their IT. The "Obamacare" misconception of providing free health care to everyone and etc etc (insert your most hated proposition here) but the biggest practical benefit was the incentives and mandates for businesses to better themselves. As it is verbosely stated in the article, across many states different hospitals, clinics, and independent doctors are developing systems together and independently to share patient data.
From personal experience I know the trials of trying to transfer data from one doctor to another. Because of current regulations I could not take my own data to another doctor (if it was lost and my data stolen it would be the doctors fault). My old doctor was non-digital and did well to fax and my new doctor wanted x-rays, charts, and test data that would have been a week through the mail or hours by fax, not considering the x-rays cannot be faxed. If there was only a central data interchange, or even a standardized method of transferring from one clinic to another.
Especially in a worst case scenario where lives matter, data from the primary care physician can save minutes or hours of diagnosis and treatment. While there is no one clear system to be the defacto standard in the future the fact that we have businesses trying to get ahead now gives hope for a brighter future.
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