Today I slipped over to the Precision Medicine Summit in Boston that’s hosted by HIMSS Media. I heard some good speakers which I’ll write about in the future including legal issues related to genomics and gene editing. However, this tweet from the conference really stuck with me:
"It took us 9 months to get @genetic data from PDF to #Epic #EMR. You can make a child in this time" Dr Nephi Walton at #PrecisionHIT #UX pic.twitter.com/XG47lSmgV9
— Ron Ribitzky, M.D. (@RonRibitzkyMD) June 12, 2017
This is a sad example of the reality of healthcare interoperability today. Healthcare organizations have problems even sharing something as standard and simple as a PDF. Once we have real genomic data and the markers behind them, EHRs won’t have any idea how to handle them. We’ll need a whole new model and approach or our current interoperability problems will look like child’s play.
By the time we figured that out, our proverbial child might be graduating high school.
