Monday, October 25, 2010

It should be about Service instead of Technology

More than two decades ago I worked in the Information Services department of a small marketing and publishing company.  Simillarly named departments existed elsewhere in the industry.  Over the years the name of that department has almost universally switched over to become first Information Systems, and finally Information Technology.

At the same time, my attention shifted from the technology, to the systems to the actual services being provided.

In healthcare the focus has changed from the Hospital Information System (or HIS) to the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) or Electronic Health Record (EHR).  But again, thought leadership has been shifting from Information Systems and patient or practice medical records to the health services that the technology is providing (e.g., Health Information Exchange, lab result reporting, et cetera).

The name change does seem a little backwards, doesn't it?

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