Steve Jobs and Healthcare IT – EMR

I like I’m sure many of you have been a bit overwhelmed by the amazing outpouring of love that’s happened after the passing of Steve Jobs. It was weird for me, because I knew that Steve Jobs health wasn’t good but I was still a bit shocked to see on Twitter that he’d passed away. Certainly a major loss for his family, but the effect will be felt well beyond them.

I’ve been touched by a number of posts throughout the healthcare IT and EMR blogosphere. Here’s a roundup of a few of the Steve Jobs posts I found.

Jim Tate did a post that considers what if Steve Jobs had developed an EHR. Here’s one section:

For the past 5 years I’ve kept hoping that Apple would develop an EHR. One that when someone first used it they would say: “Yes, this is how it should be”. Whatever he developed and released to the world didn’t even need an owner’s manual. It just worked in a very human way.

I know I’ve written about the possible Apple EHR as well and what it might look like. As I read Jim’s post I couldn’t help but wonder if the reason Steve Jobs didn’t take on a project like an EHR was because our regulations and reimbursement don’t work in a human way.

Dr. Liu on Kevin MD wrote a post about Steve Jobs as a physician mentor. I love the idea that Steve Jobs was his mentor even though they never met. He offered this heartfelt thought:

I as a doctor I’m incredibly sorry that medicine has not yet evolved to the point that a cure exists for the rare type of cancer Jobs. I’m sorry that he is so ill at an incredibly young age, in his mid 50s, when many people begin to contribute even more to society with all of the knowledge and experience they’ve acquired. The future might be a little less bright without Jobs leading his team at Apple on creating products and experiences none of us truly knew existed until he showed them to us.

It is such a shame that he died so young. In fact, I’d say that might be the hardest part of it all.

The self professed Mac Fan boy, John Moore from Chilmark research, paid a tribute as well. He highlights some of the key things that Steve Jobs did with Apple products:
-Design aesthetics combined with functionality rule
-Supporting a renegade
-Systems rather than parts
-Supporting innovation

Yep, Steve Jobs will be missed in healthcare and well beyond.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

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