Embrace the Cloud
The views and opinions expressed in this blog are mine personally, and are not necessarily representative of Texas Health Resources (THR) or its subsidiaries.
Friends of mine recently returned from a trip abroad. The advanced wireless infrastructures found in these third-world countries both astounded and pleased them. By unintentionally leapfrogging the technological revolution, these cities had bypassed the incremental advancements of the last 30 years and gone straight from laggard to leader. Societies that have not had a telephony infrastructure, for example, are suddenly delivering the highest per capita cellular subscribers.
Leapfrog advancement. Can we do it in health care IT? I believe we need to.
Does the fact that we trail our non-healthcare peers by 5-10 years embarrass you as much as it does me? Do you realize that we think of EHR as advanced when in fact it's an application that's been around since the ‘90s? We have various excuses for our delay of advancement, and some are valid. But they don't change the reality. We are behind.
We do nevertheless have an opportunity.
Cloud -- it's clearly the future of both software and hardware. And consistent with the past, it draws both resistance and hesitance, which perplexes me. We act as guardians, but have no basis for such. We pontificate more than we lead while the people we serve need us to advance.
I'm tired of employing self-depreciating humor to cover the glaring technology gap whenever I speak to non-healthcare audiences. I'm ready to leapfrog and bridge the gap using technology as a key lever. So let's embrace the cloud.
Lead!
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