In the almost two decades I've been a health and tech policy wonk, I've heard exactly two utterances that could and should be etched in medical economics stone:

Data integration is an important aspect of heath data management. However, it’s often overlooked as a core health care I.T. strategy. This is largely due to the fact that we’re used to dealing with data integration as tactical one-off projects, using whatever mechanisms work to solve the problem.

A recent Ovum study showed that almost 60% of employees bring some type of mobile device into the workplace. There are a few names for this, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), Bring Your Own PC (BYOPC), Bring Your Own Phone (BYOP), User Introduces Unsecure Device onto My Network and Then Loses My Secure Data (UIUDOMNTLMSD).

Until we are totally confident we know how to design and deploy EHRs in a manner that will substantially improve health care, why would we want to proliferate these expensive systems?

“None of the required core or menu objectives in Stage 2 requires communication with other health care providers. This means steps toward interoperability are neither being required nor measured.”

Public cloud-based platforms are not good locations for health care data, correct? While that may sound right, turns out it’s wrong.