Decision Makers Are Not Always "Insiders"

Over the past year or so, this blog has bandied about terms like interoperability, open-source, disambiguation, security and databases. All of this has been from the points of view shared by most "insiders" concerned with the introduction of electronic health records (EHR) systems into their local, regional or even national computer networks. I'm talking about individuals (including me) who typically follow other blogs like http://i2b2-zak.blogspot.com and http://geekdoctor.blogspot.com.

However, there are many more individuals who follow (and whose thinking is influenced by) publications like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. What they read is reports like "In a paper published last year, Alessandro Acquisti and Ralph Gross (two researchers from Carnegie Mellon University) reported that they could accurately predict the full, nine-digit Social Security numbers for 8.5 percent of the people born in the United States between 1989 and 2003 — nearly five million individuals." that I believe are sometimes more likely to influence their thinking than are the reports that you and I read in the blogs (and other publications) written by "insiders." So, with this last thought in mind, I place the following links to a few recent articles read by many of the decision makers out there.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/business/16records.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=electronic%20health%20records&st=cse

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/technology/17privacy.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/opinion/l13privacy.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704259304575043572008622004.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703625304575116512173339800.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703580904575132111888664060.html?KEYWORDS=electronic+health+records

This is not meant to be a representative sample. Just a reminder that you and I may or may not be speaking the same language as the general public, which counts among its numbers many high-ranking decision makers. So, what else is new?