Software entrepreneurs often have desires to change the healthcare industry. But very few have been successful. Health IT is just... different.
David Uhlman and I have written a book for O'Reilly that clearly documents the pitfalls and potentials of working with health data. And there are potentials. This is the only industry in the US that is being paid to computerize. Healthcare is the only un-computerized major industry left and by some accounts it is the largest industry in the U.S.
But attempts to become the "next Microsoft of Medicine" routinely fail. Another way to think of Health IT is that it is in an industry that has -resisted- computerization. Think about the implications of that...
Would love to hear what others think the thorns are in Health IT
-FT