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I read a great post this morning over at John Lynn's EMR & HIPPA blog, where he discusses the problem of trying to find the EHR that's right for your practice in the sea of vendors out there. The annual Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference he and many other HIT specialists recently attended brought that issue into stark relief, with huge exhibit halls full of people trying to either maintain their place in the market or jump into it. How can anyone sort between all the possibilities out there?

John's post brings up the idea of EMR differentiators. I encourage you to read it and the comments discussion, as well as a different blog post he linked to entitled "Electronic Medical Records - 3 Key Differentiators." Both blogs point out that making grandiose statements about a product doesn't cut it for the average consumer.

To hearken back to my critique of GE's HIT commercial, the success of marketing technology comes from making it appealing to the consumer. Apple's iPhone campaign started with a very simple tag line, "There's an app for that," followed by ever expanding examples of how this little device can improve your life, whether it be finding your favorite song, ordering today's lunch, or sending out images of your baby's first steps. These ads are (forgive me for repeating this now overworked term) meaningful to people. They're about experiences we can all relate to, or ones we wish we had.

EHRs should do the same thing: be appealing to the people who use them. Saying you work in the cloud means next to nothing to the average MD. Saying you can check a patient's MRI scans even if you're not in that patient's home office is much more appealing and more specific to the person who will ultimately determine the success or failure of an EHR's implementation.

Another way to make the product more desirable is to show that it's catered to a person's needs, such as developing a custom install based on a practice's workflow or patterning your system on a medical specialty. Here at Occam, our main clientele has been with chiropractors. We therefore have some options other types of practices may not need, while not emphasizing extra features that aren't widely used or necessary for that niche market. How do we make these specific improvements? By actively soliciting criticism from people who are in the field actually using the software, so we can both find out what problems they're having and how we can improve things to meet their needs.

The whole subject reminds me of the old writer's adage, "Show, don't tell." A successful best-selling author knows that readers don't want to be told in a short sentence that "Character X was scared." They want a tight, riveting paragraph describing all the ways that's true, from clammy skin, to a racing heart, to a throat so constricted the person can't even get out the scream that's pulsing through her head.

Or maybe I'm still getting over the Oscar's ode to horror films from last night.

A Little Something Extra:
Here's a YouTube clip of this year's HIMSS conference, specifically Mr. HIStalk's party (rated by many as the highlight of the week).

I'd seen the link posted last Friday but only just got around to watching this musical trip through HITECH today. If you know anything about the HIT/EHR world, you'll find it hilarious. If not, you'll at least get to hear a white guy rap besides Eminem (and without any parental advisories).

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