…I now have more time to start blogging.

The title of this blog comes from the meme that I have frequently heard that health care technology is five years behind other industries. I have heard this many times from many different sources. The goal is to discuss technology that is happening today in other industries and how it can apply to health care.

My name is Michael and I am a Senior Web Developer for Community Health Network. I develop the applications that run these web sites. I have focused on the Internet sites we maintain, including eCommunity.com and hearthopital.com.

I have always tried to look to other industries for ideas about what we can do on our web sites. If the five years behind idea is a truism, then by focusing on only what is happening in health care our group will be constantly trying to catch up or stay current with other health care web sites. By looking at what other industries are doing, we can be more innovative and work on projects that use current ideas for health care uses.

One clear example of a technology we are trying out for health care is blogging as evidenced by this blog itself. We wanted to try it out and see how we can talk about health care issues and not violate HIPAA rules and not allow competitors to see what we are doing before we have completed it. Transparency is a new trend but transparency in health care can be tricky especially when it comes to patient privacy. Mistakes in health care can be more serious that a software bug or not shipping a purchase. It involves patients’ lives and health, obviously.

We are also working on podcasting and RSS feeds. We have implemented some but are moving slowly so that they are integrated into our website, are easy to use and make sense to the user. We don't implement technology just to do it, but we want to insure that the user can find it, understand it and easily use it.

I plan to discuss health care topics, challenges with implementing technology, projects we have put into production and anything else I think would be of interest to health care technology readers.