Apple’s Full-Court Move Into Healthcare – Game Changer or Flash In the Pan? – #HITsm Chat Topic

We’re excited to share the topic and questions for this week’s #HITsm chat happening Friday, 4/6 at Noon ET (9 AM PT). This week’s chat will be hosted by Joe Babaian (@JoeBabaian) on the topic of “Apple’s Full-Court Move Into Healthcare – Game Changer or Flash In the Pan?”.

The past week has been filled with excitement about @Apple’s move into healthcare. For the followers of #HITsm, #hcldr & #HITMC this has been one of our top topics! We all care about access and ownership of our healthcare data in a coherent and interoperable way. We hang on the various new initiatives, promises, and false starts offering the opportunity to finally pull all this together.

Apple has laid down the gauntlet: @chrissyfarr writing for @CNBC “Apple’s plan to put health records on your phone has huge implications for medicine”

  • Apple announced on that it has expanded its health records product to 40 health systems and 300 hospitals, and it’s opening it up to all iOS users.
  • “Doctors put patients in charge,” Apple’s news release reads.
  • “We view the future as consumers owning their own health data,” Apple Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams, said in a recent interview with CNBC.


The reaction has been enormous:

  • Apple is changing the game, breaking the mold.
  • Apple is hyping a partial measure to a select group only within a walled garden.
  • Apple is laying the groundwork for flipping the paradigm going forward.
  • Apple is promoting Apple.

These are just some of the comments I’ve been hearing. In some ways, the reaction is almost political and veers away from sober reckoning and gets close to Apple “fanboys” vs. everyone else. This isn’t the approach we should take during a time of disruption – we must dive more deeply and look for the pros and cons while putting aside our preconceived notions. With a powerful foundation, Apple is one of the few organizations with the ability to pull something like this off – both logistically (40 systems / 300 hospitals!) and technologically. By this same token, Apple has been known to embrace their own vision and expect everyone else to do the same – right or wrong.

Please join us for this week’s #HITsm chat as we discuss the following:

T1: How is Apple’s plan for health records truly altruistic and game-changing or just a flash in the pan? #HITsm

T2: How might Apple’s entry into 40 systems & 300 hospitals make this effort successful by the very nature of the massive roll out? #HITsm

T3: Why have so many other health record / access initiatives with similar goals failed to catch fire and truly succeed? #HITsm

T4: What will be needed for Apple’s push to reach the majority of patients in an effective way? Or is this impossible? #HITsm

T5: What will you do when presented with an iPad upon admission and instructions for using your iPhone for total access to your health records and care? #HITsm

Bonus: Does it matter if the solution for health records and data lives on iOS or Android? Shouldn’t we all get behind what works with the right vision versus looking to pick things apart? #HITsm

Upcoming #HITsm Chat Schedule
4/13 – How to Evolve Healthcare Conferences in the 21st Century
Hosted by Steve Sisko (@shimcode)

4/20 – TBD
Hosted by Burt Rosen (@burtrosen) and the #WTFix team

4/27 – TBD
Hosted by TBD

We look forward to learning from the #HITsm community! As always, let us know if you’d like to host a future #HITsm chat or if you know someone you think we should invite to host.

If you’re searching for the latest #HITsm chat, you can always find the latest #HITsm chat and schedule of chats here.

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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