Medpedia

I just read this exciting news: The Federal Communications Commission has approved a $400 million program to expand broadband access to rural communities so healthcare providers there have the connectivity required to use electronic health records (EHRs), telemedicine and other health IT. 

What do you all think? Is this something that will make a big impact on adoption of EMRs and use of telemedicine?

I can only refer to a new article that states according to a recent survey "

Health IT professionals say EHRs are their top priority, according to a

survey by Embarcadero Technologies."

In my article I stated in an international conference I stated "  Chronic disease oriented patients account for 65% - 75% of the deaths in the world. By 2020-25 the 65+ aging population will almost double. Over one billion people in the world are suffering obesity related problems, both physically and psychologically. This is approaching a 2.2 billion figure in a few years. Almost 35% of the world population. In the U.S alone the total healthcare spending is going to reach around $4.1 trillion dollars by 2015. Yes, $4.1 trillion dollars."

Reducing medical and medication error rates. Information Technology applications have significant impact on reducing medical errors with accurate patient identification and medical history. Reducing cost of healthcare delivery. The skyrocketing cost of healthcare throughout the world can be controlled by deploying appropriate information technology infrastructure.Reducing burden on individual nurses, physicians and allied health workforce so that they can spend more time with the patient. They are now submerged with manual paperwork". Thus EMR and similar technologies must be adopted ASAP to prevent medical errors, skyrocketing cost and most inefficient data structures embed in non-interoperable legacy systems.

Dr. Dey

Indiana University