TECHNOLOGY: Live blogging from HIT conference

I'm at SBC Park in the bar (really!), the Wi-Fi is free and my lap top is propped on one of those big barrels of Coke cans and somewhere in the distance David Brailer is telling us that the US will exceed the achievements of those more centralized (code for socialized) systems. He thinks electronic records will happen but he's a little less optimistic about inter-operability. No money, no mechanism and no demand for it. I'd agree that it sounds like there's not much market for it, although there's a hug amount of value from doing it. He calls this the "first-mover disadvantage". Like the first guy with a fax machine....

OK, Brailer's just done. He mentioned the RFI released on Monday that is to get at the nitty gritty of the basics behind the NHIN (national health information network).  Is this pure peer to peer? Is it regionally based.

He also talked about the Regional health exchange networks (RIOs).  There are some 25 now, some 12 Federally supported.  But he is counseling against a government solution -- "this is the same government that brought you HIPPA!"

He also said that if we get the EMR at the bedside but we don't get interoperability, then we might make the problem worse.  But then he laid out all the reasons why inter-operability wont happen. I don't think that he's as optimistic as he thinks he is.