| Adapting to Electronic Health Records
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Now that EHRs are upon us, we are beginning to see how unevenly they are being adopted in the practice of medicine. Data quality has been improved, but often at the expense of strong physician complaints and patient disconnects from caregiver interaction. The EHR threatens to alter forever the patient/physician relationship. Ultimately, is this a good or bad thing?
I believe it's a good thing because care will improve and fewer medical errors will be made. However, the onus falls to physicians and their practices to make EHRs work. Yet, given their historical "trust me to do the right thing" attitude, physicians are really ill-suited to integrate EHR without help. Scribes have been proposed to improve patient interaction, and some docs swear by this solution. A better approach, in my view, is to make better use of other caregivers - RNs, LPNs, NPs and PAs -- to assume most of the data entry and recordkeeping EHR burdens.
A nice summary of the state of EHR adoption, from Medscape, is available here.
There's little that product suppliers can do in this arena, except for EHR system vendors of course. But capable advisors to physician practices and hospitals can surely play a major role in smoothing EHR adoption and altering physician attitudes.
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| Healthcare Costs, Yet Again
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I've been beating my drum on the threat of US societal healthcare costs for years. Of course, everyone is aware of the problem, most especially those who have personally experienced its devastating economic effects. But we seem powerless to address the problem. If you want to review some disturbing statistics, see this piece by Al Lewis.
There is no singular solution to this problem. Rather, every participant in the process of healthcare delivery - suppliers, providers, hospitals, insurers, regulators and the trial bar - must do their part individually to reduce the economic burdens on society and individual patients. I think it's fair to say that suppliers are not major offenders, except for suppliers of certain proprietary drugs. (Drug costs is a separate topic for another day.) Nevertheless, suppliers can make a substantial difference by commercializing innovative products and services that serve to replace expensive procedures with equally effective, inexpensive ones.
Make no mistake. Any supplier that introduces such an innovative offering will reap economic rewards as a result.
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| What does Trilogy do?
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Trilogy Associates facilitates business growth and renewal through commercialization of new products, providing the following services:
- Opportunity assessment
- Business planning and enterprise growth strategies
- New-product conceptualization, commercialization and marketing
- Market research and competitive assessment
- Business development and partnering
- Market and technological due diligence
- Assessment of the therapeutic and diagnostic potential of novel technologies
- Design of efficient and effective development strategies for early-stage biomedical products
- Business and technical writing/publishing
Inquiries to establish whether and how we might support your business initiatives are always welcome. Contact us. |