It is said that a heart attack is 80% preventable by eating well, exercising regularly, and keeping stress to a minimum*. While there is no official statistic yet, I would say that a cyber-attack is 95% preventable by vetting partners well, exercising caution, and keeping access points to a minimum. 

It's 2018, a time when there is an endless amount of information available, multiple technologies to choose from, a 24/7 news cycle, and access to any type of information, in seconds, at your fingertips. (Or, actually, without even having to use your fingertips at all — you simply have to say out loud what you want to know!)

It's always fun to take a quick look back at the prior year and see what was accomplished, but my favorite thing is looking ahead to the future, and prioritizing what we can do to help organizations meet their 2018 goals.

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"After years of frustrations, user wish-list turns positive." The headline from this year's EHR Satisfaction Survey suggests improvements in attitude and satisfaction toward hospital EHRs, yet the underlying challenges for CIOs and clinicians still haven't changed very much.

I recently attended the Strategic Health Information Exchange Collaborative (SHIEC) annual conference in Indianapolis. I had the honor of presenting Iatric Systems thoughts on how to increase HIE utilization with our very disruptive FlexButton^TM technology.

In Healthcare, as in life, the one constant on which we can all rely is change. While change usually brings better outcomes and moves us forward, the process of change can be painful. There are some, however, who come out of major change with a better-than-ever reputation and trusted partnerships with unlikely colleagues. How do they do it? How do they make it look so easy?

The fact of today's world is that patient's medical records do not reside in one system. I don't know anyone today that has only ever been to one doctor, it just doesn't happen. So, it's no wonder that we have trouble accessing a patient's full medical record, and verifying their identity across or even within systems.

Interoperability remains a top challenge for hospitals — so much so that it was cited in the HealthcareIT News 2016 EHR Satisfaction Survey as a top issue. The lack of interoperability causes hospitals to be inefficient and causes duplicate work for clinicians. It may be time to start looking outside of the EHR to make interoperability between systems happen.

We all need to recharge our internal batteries now and then. To recharge, some climb Mt. Everest in their personal time, some take vacations. For me, it’s making music — singing, writing, playing. Last year, just for fun, I released a Daughtry parody song espousing the virtues of telehealth called “Staying Home.”