Top 10 Blog Posts on EMR and EHR from 2017

As we kick off 2018, I thought it would be fun to look back at the top 10 blog posts (based on views) in 2017 for EMR and EHR. It’s always great to see what people found interesting and which topics were of interest to readers. Plus, I’m always fascinated to see what old articles are still of interest to people. Not to mention, to look at what has changed since the article was written.

Facebook in Healthcare – What’s amazing about this blog post is that it’s from 2014. Looking back 3+ years later, I haven’t really seen Facebook become a big player in healthcare. Sure, there are plenty of patient groups on Facebook, but it’s not really a Facebook product. Facebook has done a number of things in healthcare over the years to get the word out about organ donation and things like that, but I currently don’t see them as a big player in healthcare the same way Amazon, Google, and Apple are looking at healthcare.

What the EMR Industry Can Learn From Facebook – Amazing that another article about Facebook was in the Top 10 and this one from 2012 was written by Priya Ramchandran. Her vision of a world where a patients health record was just automatically pushed down to a server every time we have a health encounter has been far from realized. The challenge of the comparison for me is that Facebook has a reason to push all that data together. In healthcare, there are reasons why organizations don’t want to push the data out to the patient. Until we change those reasons, we won’t see this vision despite hundreds of companies efforts to try and accomplish it. Yes, even Apple is working on solving this problem now and I think they’ll fail.

Epic Launches FHIR-Based App Platform – Epic’s launch of the Epic App Orchard platform was big news in 2017. I’ll admit that I’m still a bit skeptical about Epic App Orchard. Many herald it as Epic opening up their EHR to developers. I personally am skeptical and fear that it’s really just making public the connections they were already creating and is more PR than anything. Epic App Orchard isn’t a truly open API that would allow innovators and entrepreneurs to build on top of the Epic EHR. Plus, I fear that Epic App Orchard is just a new revenue stream for Epic. Those are my fears that I’ll be exploring as I talk to people in 2018 about it.

Publicly Traded Health IT Companies – I wouldn’t have thought of this blog post as one that would have garnered a lot of attention. Maybe that means we should do more work covering the publicly traded healthcare IT companies on this blog. They seem to be increasingly dominating the landscape.

Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare: Medical Ethics and the Machine Revolution – One of the great additions to EMR and EHR this year was Janae Sharp and this blog post was an excellent example of her work. Understanding the impact of AI in healthcare is going to be an extremely important topic over the next decade. I’m glad she kicked off the conversation since it’s a challenging one. I still keep thinking about the question she asked, “Can a machine learn empathy?” Chew on that one for a while.

EHR Innovation & Regulation: Friends or Foes? – I’m really glad that this post by Stephen Dart from AdvancedMD did so well. I think most doctors don’t appreciate the challenging situation EHR vendors are in when it comes to balancing compliance and innovation. I believe it’s the core of what’s wrong with most EHR software out there and contributes to a lot of physician burnout.

Is Cerner Edging Up On Epic? – This post was from 2016, but the question is still a good one. The reality is that both Cerner and Epic are doing amazingly well. I don’t see anything on the horizon that’s going to change it. Both of them are behemoths that are doing incredibly well. I don’t really see either of them cutting into the progress of the other either. What do you think?

Is Your Health Data Unstructured? – Enabling an AI Powered Healthcare Future – I still love the insight shared in this article. Technology doesn’t solve your problems. Technology amplifies your current state. If you’re doing a good job, technology will accelerate the good. If you’re doing poorly on something, technology will accelerate and amplify the bad.

#HIMSS17 Mix Tape – This is just a fun post leading into HIMSS that Colin has done every year with us for a lot of years. The exciting part is that when Colin posted this he was still working at a Healthcare IT vendor. We’re lucky to now have him formally as part of the Healthcare Scene team. I’m quite sure Colin will be doing a #HIMSS18 Mix Tape shortly. So, if you have suggestions, reach out to him on Twitter.

12 Reasons Why EMRs Improve Patient Care – How amazing that this post from 2011 is still doing so well. I imagine it’s because so many people are trying to understand the value of the EHR. Especially as it related to improving patient care. This post really deserves a future dedicated blog post to look at the 12 ways EMR improve patient care and how many of them have been realized. I’ll put it on my to-do list for 2018.

There you have it. The top 10 blog posts on EMR and EHR for 2017. It’s always fun to look back and see what’s changed and what’s stayed the same. Thanks to each of you for reading and supporting the work we do here. Now on to an awesome 2018!

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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