Shaw's Eco-Logic

Surely you know that HITECH is an acronym for Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, right? Well, you'd be all over this if you were a vendor of any product related to electronic health records.

That's because the Feds are offering something close to $17 billion in incentive payments (out of an overall budget of $22 billion) for so-called "meaningful use" of certified e-health record technology. President Obama's goal is to have us completely switched over to e-health records by 2014.

Naturally, there are all sorts of problems that will have to be addressed, including data security and patient privacy. And, there will be increased costs, with absolutely no guarantee that outcomes would be improved. As decades of information technology have shown, no matter what the system, the people—and their human limitations—are still the same.

My latest HND piece discusses this, and profiles a cool new company in this space—LigoLab.

Read the complete article.