Healthcare IT Archives

Strategic Operational Plans

by Barry P Chaiken, MD | May 20, 2015 | Healthcare IT

Standing up in a canoe is hard enough. Standing up in two canoes with one foot in each while traveling through Class 4 rapids is mind-boggling. Class 4 rapids are defined as “intense, powerful but predictable rapids requiring precise boat handling in turbulent water....

Still Babbling

by Barry P Chaiken, MD | Jan 19, 2015 | Healthcare IT

Update: In the more than seven years since I wrote this article, healthcare information technology tools continue to struggle to achieve robust interoperability. Fortunately, through efforts of the Office of the National Coordinator for Healthcare Information...

Railroads, Weed and EMRs

by Barry P Chaiken, MD | Jul 20, 2014 | Healthcare IT

As independent companies built railroad lines in the 19th century, each company chose a different gauge—the distance between the inner rails—for their track. As the railway industry first grew out of the need to transport mined materials, most early railroad companies...

Our Tower of Babel

by Barry P Chaiken, MD | Nov 5, 2013 | Healthcare IT

The Bible describes why humans speak so many languages: The narrative of the city of Babel is recorded in Genesis 11:1-9. Everyone on earth spoke the same language. As people migrated from the East, they settled in the land of Shinar. People there sought to make...

Evolving to Health 3.0

by Barry P Chaiken, MD | Oct 8, 2013 | Healthcare IT

The dramatic shift to value-based reimbursement requires all providers to completely disrupt their care processes and workflows to ensure the delivery of high quality, safe care at a reasonable cost. For more than four decades these same providers thrived in an...

Super-Organism Focused Healthcare

by Barry P Chaiken, MD | Sep 6, 2012 | Healthcare IT

About 10 trillion cells make up the human body. The joining of eggs and sperm at the time of fertilization brings together 23,000 genes. In a healthy gut alone, more than 100 trillion bacteria thrive. Scientists estimate that the microbiome—the term used to describe...