MedCity News is providing in-depth coverage of HIMSS2012 as part of a special series sponsored by Hyland Software.
GE Healthcare, one of the elite of the elites in healthcare IT, is acting as if U.S. healthcare reform will survive a constitutional challenge before the U.S. Supreme Court.
“We are betting that healthcare reform is not going to be overturned,” said Justin Steinman, vice president and general manager of marketing of GE’s Clinical Business Solutions.
“At the end of the day, the spirit of healthcare reform is good,” he said during a private meeting at the HIMSS2012 conference in Las Vegas. “Are there going to be tweaks? Of course. Can we predict legislation? Of course not.”
I think it’s always important to take the temperature of GE, which manages to charge forward with some of the more innovative and sleek health IT solutions. It’s currently poring over and leveraging more than $25 million in de-identified patient records. Plus, among its announcements at HIMSS was a product, developed in partnership with AirStrip, that delivers patient information to the iPhone and iPads of critical-care doctors. Also, an add-on to the company’s Centricity Perinatal product, called Connect, will place all pediatric medical information on the fetal strip.
Steinman said these innovations, healthcare reform and additional big-data advancements will change where patient records are held and who owns the best of them.
“The only universal picture of the patient is the insurance record,” he said.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
He predicts that in three years, the patient will own the most unified picture.
[Photo from Flickr user borman818]
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