An interesting book from the CEO of Kaiser Permanente, George Halvorson: http://www.healthcarereformnow.org/

In the second hard truth, Mr. Halvorson discusses care linkage deficiencies, of which he describes how medical doctors creates paper based medical records for their patients.

It is commendable that a person like Mr. Halvorson which has so much influence, is actively driving for digitizing health care records. If these records are made easily available to care providers as well as care recipients, great efficiencies can be created.

Digitizing medical records does come with some security concerns, which should be addressed. Only authorized personnel should have access. Anecdotal evidence which I have seen and heard points to the need for improving the culture in the health care industry in regards to safe guarding patient information. An awareness campaign is needed among care givers to educate them on how to best secure such information. Furthermore, tools needs to be made available to the health care professionals which allows them to continue to provide healthcare without being bogged down with security measures hindering them in their work.

These tools should address the who, what, when and where in regards to access to highly sensitive information such as patient records, while enabling the health care professionals to spend more time caring for patients. So these tools must enable secure collaboration so each professional who needs access to information readily has this information, however is restricted to only this information and not all information of all patients.