Welcome Dr. Healy...

A new web log focusing on Medical Informatics and the implications it brings to the healthcare industry proves to be a fascinating read if you're interested in how social and technical change in this information-rich world will affect your healthcare.

I've spoken at length with Dr. Ronald Healy (who also happens to be my older brother), and he has a lot of interesting insights regarding the fledgling field of Medical Informatics. 

Having just concluded a two-year roll-out of a clinical EMR (electronic medical record) initiative, he has some interesting technical and even social commentary on its effects already... not the least of which is the natural repulsion many physicians have to change, much less technological change.  To that point, he sees where a lot of this frustration comes from:  The "automated" workflow many of these clinical applications feature do not accurately mirror the actual workflow many physicians use in their day-to-day practice.

Anyway, I'll leave further detail on that for him to expand on, but my advice is for the primary health system manufacturers to pay attention to this type of open (and now public) feedback.  (That means you GE Healthcare, McKesson and Cerner)

Subscribe now to Dr. Healy's feed.

... and as an added bonus, he is also very intrigued with how social networking applications (i.e. Web 2.0) can play a very important role in the new world of healthcare.