Summary
The whole point of the Health Information Technology Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) portion of the Economic Stimulus Law is to improve the quality, safety and efficiency of care delivery through the freer exchange of electronic patient information among treating practitioners. However, if hospitals' current data centers can't handle the inevitable great increase in data, the federal government's outlay of $36.5 billion to subsidize electronic health records will all be for naught.
Analysis
As hospitals of all sizes adopt comprehensive electronic health records systems to qualify for incentives under the federal stimulus law, many (especially smaller to medium sized institutions) are finding that their data centers are not up to the task. This is also true where hospitals are trying to help their surrounding affiliated area clinics to adopt electronic records and accommodate their resultant electronic data needs, also.
Many hospitals are using "virtualization" software to create "virtual machines" within servings. Others are using blade servers holding eight to 10 servers to accommodate their increased data handling needs. Still others are implementing storage area networks to share storage space to improve efficiency.
Companies which may be poised to help literally thousands of hospitals to upgrade their data centers in anticipation of the surge in data generated through the significant increase in electronic records in the next three to five years include:
1. IBM;
2. Accenture;
3. CSC;
4. Hewlett Packard; and
5. Cisco Systems.
This author consults with leading institutions through GLG
Analyses are solely the work of the authors and have not been edited or endorsed by GLG.
