The US Healthcare industry has proved to be one of the
slowest industry domains when it comes to the acceptance of IT software
solutions in order to positively affect the efficiency as well as the accuracy
of day-to-day operations. The primary reason for this sluggishness is the
complexity of introducing a new ‘way’ to do things into an industry that
heavily relies on previously stored data and gets flooded with lots of new
information every single day. Apart from the very slow pace of acceptance by
several healthcare professionals as well as the related authorities, one of the
main reasons why IT software solutions have had a slow start in the healthcare
industry, is because of the presence of various compliances that must be met by
an IT healthcare solution in order to be practically implemented on all levels
of healthcare industry.
The HIPAA HITECH Act passed in 2009 accurately foresaw the
rapid increase in the number of Electronic Medical Records software in the
coming years. More and more number of patients (as well as doctors) prefer the
ease of having their medical data on handheld mobile devices because of the ease
of data access and modification. This means that there is a spate of EMR
Software in the market, which makes it very critical that all healthcare
solutions ensure the security and privacy of medical data. This is what the
HITECH ACT aims to address by increasing the legal liability for non-compliance
by widening the scope of privacy and security protections under HIPAA.
This poses a challenge to all the IT solutions providers as
they have to come up with healthcare solutions that help provide superior services
to healthcare professionals as well as the patients without violating various
healthcare compliances in the US healthcare industry. Irrespective of these
challenges, healthcare entities cannot neglect the role of technology in making
day to day healthcare practices fast and efficient.
