> Something my doctor friends remind me of from time to time is how disconnected their actual workflows are from whatever system the money folks decided to buy.
There are two ways EMRs get made. They start from the money side and grow into clinical, or they start in clinical and grow into finance. This means however they started, that's what it'll be strong in.
I would absolutely love to get to help design an EMR. A huge part of my job is finding ways to help our clinical staff spend less time in the EMR and more with patients. There's so much room for improvement, but it's a hard market to crack.
You are absolutely correct about it being a hard market to crack.
My wife, who is a doctor, often complains that the various systems she has to deal with are often unusable.
When I was designing my new, general-purpose data management system that handles both structured and unstructured data well; she begged me to try to come up with a better system to manage medical data.
While I think my system has the potential to make a much better EMR; the work and money needed to break into that market felt beyond my reach.
A little startup with a superior architecture, but without all the political influence and domain knowledge to navigate the medical world; has little chance of gaining a foothold.