Here's to Your (Electronic) Health

Computerworld - I had my annual physical last week, and there were no surprises. The standard admonitions to watch my diet and get more exercise were accompanied by the usual depressing reassurances that all of those little aches, pains and minor bodily dysfunctions were merely normal signs of aging.
Also as usual, my primary care physician imparted this advice and information while shuffling through a bulging manila folder, looking in vain for notes from specialists and test results that either had never been sent or had been inadvertently tucked into an EKG printout from five years ago. That manila folder is as close to a comprehensive medical record as exists for me. And I'm much better off than most people, since I've been going to the same internist for 20 years.
This country's medical records system, or lack thereof, is just one of the things desperately wrong with the way we deliver health care in the U.S. The good news is that the federal government has a plan to use information technology to fix this aspect of the medical mess. The bad news is that the plan will take so long and cost so much to execute that it's hard to have confidence that it will ever come to fruition.
Last month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released its 10-year road map for the creation of a "health information infrastructure." The aim is to create a consolidated electronic health record (EHR) for every American and to build a nationwide network for securely transporting those records to health care providers.
The potential benefits of the system are enormous. Estimates of financial savings resulting from streamlined health care administration and the elimination of redundant care range as high as nearly half a trillion dollars a year.
Beyond monetary considerations, a single EHR for every citizen would translate into improved care. Access to more information means that doctors and other providers will make fewer mistakes. Diagnoses and treatment plans would be more likely to be made in the context of the patient's overall health and medical history, rather than just in response to individual symptoms. In this case, technology would actually promote a more holistic practice of medicine.
So, if the potential benefits the health information infrastructure are so great, why isn't it on a faster track? A decade is a long time to wait.
Looking beyond the delays endemic to political maneuvering and entrenched bureaucracies, the sticking points are money and technology.
While the system will lead to enormous savings