ATLANTA " Dr. David Blumenthal introduced himself to the IT community yesterday in a talk in which he told the story of his first experiences using health IT and shared his convictions about its future.
Speaking to a crowd of thousands for a keynote address at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society annual conference, he had the tone of a gracious outsider in the IT community.
"I want to thank you for welcoming me into the community of health IT," he said. "I'm a newcomer to this world."
Blumenthal, a primary care physician and a college professor, said he first used health IT reluctantly.
"I was comfortable with paper; I liked my prescription pad: I liked writing out those requisitions in triplicate.
But, "gradually I found it was making me a better doctor," he said.
His interest turned to a conviction when his EHR alerted him that a patient he was discharging was allergic to a sulfate he was about to prescribe.
"My professional career flashed before my eyes," he said.
The experience also helped strengthen his belief that the technology best serves the patient. "As long we keep the patient as our North Star we will not go astray," he said.
In giving the history of this first 10 months in the job, Blumenthal reminded the crowd they were involved an experiment that had no equal in the history of healthcare, "or any other industry," he said.
"It's a huge and unprecedented ambition," he said. "No one in the history of healthcare has tried to do something as complicated and difficult and in such a large diverse country with the kind of independence of spirit and professional autonomy that we have."
Of the "meaningful use" plan, he was as positive: "This is the first time I believe anyone has laid out in black and white what it should expect of a modern electronic health care system."
After reviewing the accomplishments of the last 10 months Blumenthal listed some of his priorities for the next year.
Those include enlisting the states in the goal of nationwide health information exchange; setting up "Beacon" communities where the impact of health IT on public health can be measured and "thinking about the next iteration of meaningful use and standards and certification criteria."
Overall, Blumenthal said he was optimistic. "I think the wind is at our back in so many ways," he said, including having bi-partisan support and "the inevitability of science and improvement working with us."
In the very near future modern information management practices will be as accepted as the stethoscope, he said.
"There will be no question whether the federal government ought to support the meaningful use of health IT. It will be assumed as a core professional attribute," he said.
"And then instead of hanging back physicians will be at the front of this effort to advance the technology."
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