Those Making an Impact on EHR Adoption

OK I’m going to seriously date myself here. My first heroes emerged from the flickering black and white images of 1950’s television. Roy Rogers, Sky King, and Davy Crockett made up that list. Later on I transitioned to Zorro and much later to Caine on Kung Fu. Television doesn’t do it for me anymore.

In my twenties for a little while Indian gurus and then politicians made up my grab bag of heroes. I keep moving on and I guess that says something about me. I have no idea who I’ll look up to in ten years but I can easily tell you who my heroes are today. They don’t come from the idiot box (my mother’s name for TV) or some zealot who rants that the world is about to end or some politician who says it will be different this time. No way do I see any heroes on Wall Street or in the arenas of sport.

My heroes have morphed from being nouns to being verbs. The people that draw my attention now are those that are focused on the Common Good. They don’t hold back their knowledge or protect their turf. Some are famous, some are not. They are not concerned with business models or patents. Maybe a little of that is OK but not too much or you drop off my A list. Since I spend so much time living and breathing EHR adoption it should be no surprise that is where my heroes live now.

Here is my current list to join the ranks of Roy Rogers and Zorro:

John Halamka – www.geekdoctor.blogspot.com Twitter: @jhalamka
John D. Halamka, MD, MS, is Chief Information Officer of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Chief Information Officer at Harvard Medical School, Chairman of the New England Healthcare Exchange Network (NEHEN), Co-Chair of the HIT Standards Committee, a full Professor at Harvard Medical School, and a practicing Emergency Physician.

Keith Boone – www.motorcycleguy.blogspot.com Twitter: @motorcycle_guy
Proclaimed Standards Geek for GE Healthcare and a member of IHE, and HL7 Keith co-chairs a number of standards committees including the IHE Patient Care Coordination (PCC) Planning Committee, the HL7 Structured Documents Work Group, the EHRA Quality and Clinical Decision Support SIG, and was co-chair of the HITSP Care Management and Health Records TC.

Brian Ahier – www.ahier.blogspot.com Twitter: @ahier
A recent guest on MU Live!, Brian chairs the Technology Workgroup of Oregon’s HIT Oversight Council and  is a well known and respected blogger at O’Reilly Media. He is also President at Gorge Health Connect, Inc. and Health IT Evangelist at Mid-Columbia Medical Center

Jane Sarasohn-Kahn – www.healthpopuli.com Twitter: @healthpopuli
Jane Sarasohn-Kahn is a health economist and management consultant. As stated on her blog, her POV on health is best-defined by the World Health Organization: health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

 

Nate Osit – www.nateosit.wordpress.com Twitter: @NateOsit
His twitter bio states he’s just your average Health IT geek / Implementation Specialist. I talk EMR/EHR, FOSS, HITsm, hcsm & Linux. Passionate about building communities. Average? I think not.

Thanks for inspiring me to listen to what Abe Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature”. If you see Davy Crockett, tell him “hi” for me.

Jim Tate is a nationally recognized expert on the CMS EHR Incentive Program, certified technology and meaningful use and author of The Incentive Roadmap® The Meaningful Use of Certified Technology: Stage 1.