« Their own worst enemy | Main | Complacency's cost »

Do you trust Microsoft?

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that Bill Gates has zero credibility when it comes to advocating for a seamless, integrated streamlined system to collect, store, and disseminate health care data?

I'm writing this on a Mac, because I finally threw my Windows PC out the window after one too many system freezes, followed by some unintelligible error message, which presaged a long and frustrating effort to get it resolved.

Microsoft has been pilloried for sloppy introductions of new systems (Vista, anyone?) that are bloated memory hogs, rife with bugs, full of security gaps, easily brought down by viruses, and expensive to boot (no pun intended).

So, now Microsoft wants to convince a bunch of notoriously independent cheapskate docs to use some industry standard system to collect and send individuals' health records to a central storage facility, where it will be accessible by other entities? Who will guarantee they won't lose it, confuse it with someone else's data, leave it accessible to some Eastern European hacker, corrupt it, or find some as-yet-undiscovered way to use technology to screw up health data?

This is not just losing a document or getting frustrated with applications that aren't compatible or suffering through yet another ctrl-alt-del episode. We're talking life and death here.

I'd like to see a lot better QC and QA before I trust my health records, and therefore my health, to these folks.

Posted by on October 9, 2007 6:48 AM |

Comments

I'm stunned that someone who writes a blog on an almost daily basis hasn't been using a MAC already! Your life just got A LOT easier. Finally, we agree on something!

Posted by: George | October 9, 2007 1:49 PM

Post a comment

Due to the growing number of spam comments, I have to ask you to do one more thing to get your comment posted. Just type in the text you see in the box below into the textbox to the right. That will prove you are a real human and not a computer system that is posting spam. Please be careful to enter in the right code; if you make a mistake the system may temporarily block you. If the authentication system is blocking you, try again in an hour. If you continue to be blocked, send your comment to jpaduda AT healthstrategyassoc DOT com and note that you would like your comment posted. Thanks.