Jim Tate, Meaningful Use Expert

Could Apple Develop an EHR?

I wasn’t going to write a post on Steve Jobs because it seems everything has been said. But here I go anyway. I was just talking on the phone with a friend and asked him his reaction to the passing of Steve Jobs. Without hesitation he said there has been no one except Jobs since Leonard da Vinci who had the creative ability to mix technology and art. I guess that says it well.

Jobs was strange cat, and they don’t come along very often. Details of his personal life, while fascinating, are irrelevant to the larger story. I used to wonder how he could keep Apple two years ahead of the industry until I realized that when he was at the helm of Apple they were always in uncharted waters and it simply took their competitors two years to catch up. He thought people should be able to listen to music on trains so he created the iPod. When he came out with the iPhone people slept on sidewalks to buy one. When he launched the iPad the netbook market died overnight. He made most CEOs look like card board cut outs.

For the past 5 years I’ve kept hoping that Apple would develop an EHR. One that when someone first used it they would say: “Yes, this is how it should be”. Whatever he developed and released to the world didn’t even need an owner’s manual. It just worked in a very human way.

Everyone has their own list of special people they feel have pushed the limits of humanity in a positive way. I include him in a very small group of points of light that were on earth during my lifetime. Dylan, Martin Luther King, Jobs, and one or two more. That’s it. He was an original and we are all diminished by his passage. Lightening struck him and he passed it on. That is about as good as it gets.

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.