It’s tough to run most businesses without revenue, and in most cases difficult to run a business without customers. In the HIE world, it’s the same with the exception that they can do without those when they have government funding. But funding eventually runs out and this means that they must generate revenue through “customers” – providers, payers, patients or other third parties like life sciences organizations for secondary use of information. The good news is that HIEs, like traditional businesses, can sustain themselves when they have lots of customers; the bad news is they can’t when they lack customers.
In many cases, it’s not the lack of customers that’s the problem, it’s the ability to “connect” with them, which requires overcoming issues with integration and data harmonization – transformation, translation and normalization of data. Dr. John D. Halamaka recently predicted that 2012 will be the year of connectivity for HIEs, based on lessons learned from Steve Jobs. According to Dr. Halamak, “If 2011 was the year of governance, 2012 will be the year of connectivity, 2013 the year of registries, and 2014 the year of queries.” While I’m sure we will have more discussion around governance to come, I agree that we made great progress in 2011, for example, the philosophy of moving from “Opt-in” to “Opt-out” in most aspects.
Let’s hope Dr. Halamka is right about 2012 – the more connectivity between customers and partners with HIEs, whether private or public, the more access to complete patient information, which will lead to meeting meaningful use requirements, obtaining more paying customers and being able to resell anonymized data for secondary use purposes.
What’s your prediction around HIEs in 2012?
Happy Holidays.
Gary