Thursday, November 01, 2007

My kingdom for an inter-operable vendor!

The following was forwarded to me by one of our vendors (which is ironic, once you see the content).

The heads of the two leading health IT projects in the world -- Richard Granger of the UK's Connecting for Health, and Richard Alvarez, the head of Canada's Infoway -- spoke at a recent conference and complained loudly about the state of the health IT industry (see "NHS chief chides vendors for promising more than they deliver").

"Vendors! You can't do these projects without them, but many of the products proferred can't do the job," exclaimed Granger. Adding to the fray, Alvarez stated: "Vendors continue to say they can do it -- but they can't. We don't have a single vendor that is truly interoperable."

Noting that the American approach is to proceed more cautiously -- through standards development, certification, evaluation, ROI calculations and multiple panels and commissions -- Granger quipped: "Some people lack the spine...to bring about systemic benefits and seek only to engineer point-to-point benefits." This approach, he said, is "doomed to fail."

I've got only one thing to say about Granger's comments: Hear, Hear!!

1 comment:

Mark Singh MD said...

I have seen this during our own vendor search process. There were some vendors who literally said "yes" to everything. Its funny, because I knew there was no way some of these vendors could do what they claimed to be able to do. The standards for that particular process had not even been released! I wish I had requested a demo that function.
Mark Singh MD
www.clinicore.blogspot.com