Author: DOuG pRATt

Paper Cut

The first two pages show the comics layout in The Boston Globe until this week. The single page on the right is how it looks now.

The reduction was inevitable, so there really isn’t any point in protesting, but the Globe has a Facebook page for subscribers, so I added a comment there. This puts me one step closer to no longer taking home delivery of the print edition.

An Epic Failure Success

The New York Times has this article about Wisconsin-based Epic Systems. More than half of all patient records in America are stored and retrieved electronically using Epic’s software.

The article is worth reading, despite saying nothing about how Epic became so successful. When the company was starting out it bought operating systems from my former employer, and part of my job early on was generating customized O/S assemblies for Epic. So I know something about the company, and their story is much more interesting than knowing how its sprawling campus is decorated, which is the focus of the NYTimes article.

One important point of business about Epic Systems in the article is that the company is privately held. For contrast, I highly recommend this excellent piece in The New Yorker from last August, about another EHR (Electronic Health Record) company, the publicly traded Athenahealth.

Also in The New Yorker, Atul Gawande talks about the difficulties confronting doctors, including himself, who are required to use Epic’s software. (Note: There is no connection to Epic Games.) If you don’t want to read the article, there is this video explanation, smuggled out of a bunker in an undisclosed location.

https://youtu.be/7fy83E_pFNs

Gawande has no one to blame but himself, however, as his writings were influential on President Obama in requiring the move to electronic patient record keeping. Gawande now has an opportunity to further influence American healthcare, having been picked by Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and Jamie Dimon to head up a new think-tankish venture.