Incentives Push Doctors to E-Prescribe

Reading the Wall Street Journal this morning I came across an article which had several interesting things to say. The article shows a growing trend to connect information technology to our nations medical practices. In order to reinforce this it was proposed that doctors who don't use electronic forms of prescribing medication could have their Medicare reimbursements reduced by 1% in 2012 and 2% by 2014. The article estimated that it will be $25,000 - $45,000 per doctor per year in order to keep all their patients information safe, current and useful. So if a medical provider doctor does more than $2,500,000 in Medicare services a year it would be within their interest to have their systems in place by 2012. The reduction of Medicare reimbursement would hurt the larger medical care providers first before smaller ones as 1 or 2% could be a significant amount of money.

"E-Prescribing" has its advantages too because it can minimize costs by reducing errors in prescriptions. It will do a background check of current medications taken by a patient and look for drug conflicts along with search for generic drugs which are available at lower costs. These systems could pay for themselves if utilized because it would create a more efficient medical service.

Public health is important enough to our country that the Obama administration plans to spend $50 billion over five years to encourage the adoption of health information technology. This aid will allow doctor to be better connected with the pharmacy. The next stage of this is the pharmacy will need to be better connected to the patient in order for this system to be complete from prescribing to digesting the pills.

There are some software companies that are already operating in this market place including links placed below. The way I see it is they are in need of a product which completes the prescription drug delivery all the way to your bathroom counter. Potentiality they would need a product and addition software which completes the prescription information technology chain.

This is a great step towards making health easier to manage with the use of information technology.

"Incentives Push Doctors to E-Prescribe" -WSJ

Hard Times Drive Innovation

Reading today's paper I came across an interview with the a Harvard professor who focuses on innovation. Much of what was said in the interview I found myself agreeing with. Difficult times encourage people to think about doing things in different and creative ways. Innovation during difficult times is also unique because it is lean and is evolving with many constraints.

I consider our project an innovative way of solving an important social issue. The best part about this idea is that it is accomplishing a large and complex problem in a very simple manner. No new technology is being developed, in fact the technology being utilized has been around for some time and is fairly cheap. It will help craft our project to operate in this bare bones type of environment.

Towards the end of the interview the professor also talked about innovative business structures which I found interesting because of the stage our project is in. Creating a holding company which has subsidiary companies allows for private ownership while also having the option to take the specific segments public. This method appears that it would retain more control and also create unity among different segments.

Happy New Year

"How Hard Times Can Drive Innovation" -WSJ