The John Halamka Interview

The Doctor Anonymous Show is proud to welcome John D. Halamka, MD who is the Chief Information Officer of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He is author of the blog called Life as a Healthcare CIO.

I did want to share a couple of excerpts from his blog - The first of which I call the "Geek Doctor" portion from a post entitled "Designing the Ideal Electronic Health Record:"

I was posed a simple question - If I had infinite resources, infinite time, and no legacy compatibility issues, how would I design the electronic health record of the future?

The web is the way. Given the 24x7 nature of healthcare, the need for physicians to be in many physical locations, and the multitude of clinician computing devices, the ideal EHR should be web-based, browser neutral and run flawlessly on every operating system. I highly recommend the use of AJAX techniques to give physicians a more real time interactive experience. Client/Server may have some user interface advantages, but it's just too challenging to install thick clients on every clinician computing device. Citrix is an expensive and sometimes slow remote access solution. Native web works.

For the non-geek part of the blog, I reference a post simply called "Go Climb A Rock:"

It's Thursday, so it's time for a personal introspection blog. At times I get quizzical looks for being vegan, playing the Japanese flute, or wearing black. However, the most unusual looks from my peers occur when they see photos like this one of Dark Shadows on Mescalito North in Red Rocks, Nevada.

Winter mountaineering is a good way to get away from your cell phone (the battery life is 2 minutes at -40F), but why climb a rock? Think of climbing a mountain as a giant Rubik's cube - a wonderful mental exercise. Climbing requires a well orchestrated combination of gear, route finding, movement, and teamwork to make it to the top.

So, needless to say, this is interesting stuff. So, tune in Thursday, May 1st at 9pm Eastern Time where we will be talking about his blog and a whole lot more. You can also join us in the live chat room or even call into the show to ask us a question. Check back here tomorrow for details!