Category: Tech

From HIS to EHR to EMR

It’s been more than ten years since the HITECH program within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act began offering incentive payments to hospitals and doctors to encourage the use of electronic medical records. Medical providers that were already using electronic systems also received these payments when switching vendors.

The end result was that President Obama distorted the well-established and competitive medical information software market. This paved the way for a single privately-held company — Epic Systems — to become dominant in the market, despite its products being, by far, the most expensive.

Marketplace covers the recent acquisition of Cerner by database giant Oracle, but with no mention of Epic. Cerner has the government contracts for hospitals within the Department of Defense and, separately, the Veteran’s Administration.

The fact is, medical records within Epic’s huge installed base can be shared seamlessly between providers, if they so choose. I have seen this for myself, and appreciate the convenience. With Epic on track to eventually manage 75% of all non-military medical records in the United States, the government might want to consider an antitrust case against the company it helped to promote.

Ultimately, the solution is to force a standard format for medical records that can be shared between medical providers using different software systems. How likely is it the government will pursue that route to level the playing field, rather than a direct antitrust case? I see neither happening anytime soon.

Cassette Assets

This is a blog post about cassettes, with no mention of the Sony Walkman, except here. The Compact Cassette was developed by a Belgian team of engineers at Philips, and introduced under the Norelco brand in 1963. Two years later, to promote the new format, Philips gave portable cassette decks to EMI for the Beatles to try.

Upstairs at EMI Studio 2, 1965. Engineer Norman “Hurricane” Smith is on the left.

Christmas, 1969, I received a Panasonic RQ-204S cassette deck. It was rugged, with very good sound that could be played loud without breaking up, even at full volume.

I used the Panasonic deck to record WBCN radio and some records, but especially to exchange voice letters with my friend Greg, back in Connecticut. Long distance phone calls were out of the question, but a cassette could be mailed with a couple of stamps.

Norwalk, Connecticut, January, 1969

I first learned about cassettes as a computer software medium upon meeting one of my college roommates, named Brad. Before starting at Westfield State, Brad spent a year aboard the Atlantis II research ship, out of Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

The Atlantis II is best known for hosting the Alvin deep-ocean submarine, and for being used to locate the Titanic. The year when my friend Brad was aboard, scientists were conducting the early research into Continental Drift. I recall the project ended up being featured in National Geographic.

Brad was a math whiz just out of high school, working as a Fortran programmer on the Atlantis II. Cassettes were used to load programs and for data storage. When we met, Brad had a large collection of cassettes from the ship that he had mostly repurposed from data to music, with his very expensive, high-end portable Sony deck. Ten years later, working with Brad at a software company, the sound of the 300 baud modems we used was indistinguishable from what I heard playing data cassettes.

Which brings me to what this blog post is really about — Radiolab’s Mixtape series, and their Cassetternet segment from a month ago. The first part is about cassettes used for software. The second part returns to cassettes as a means of human communication; specifically, their influence in bringing about the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

Getting the Hanks of Blogging Again

Lessee, my last post was way back on October 15. Here’s Tom Hanks playing DJ for Halloween.

And here Tom’s Thanksgiving Edition.

Want to listen on headphones? For ten bucks you can’t go wrong with these. No Bluetooth, no noise cancelling, just excellent sound. I’m listening with them right now. (No, I don’t make any money from Amazon!)

Sony ZX Series Wired On-Ear Headphones MDR-ZX110