We spoke with Brian Ahier (@ahier), Health IT Evangelist, Mid-Columbia Medical Center about Health Information Exchange (HIE) at HIMSS11. The healthcare industry is changing rapidly, and Brian sees HIE as a foundational technology for the changes we need to see accomplished in the coming years.
Although HIE is important to the future of healthcare technology, Brian sees the HIE movement as difficult to predict. He likens these fledgling stages of HIE to the beginning of the commercial internet, which was “a bit messy”. Ultimately, in the area of HIE and healthcare technology in general, Brian feels that those with the best ideas will rise to the top. Now is the best time to be an innovator in healthcare and particularly in health information technology.
