We talk about Electronic Medical Records, or EMRs, a lot on Cloud9, but they are only a small function of how the marriage of technology and medicine will affect our lives in the near future for the better.

In a late 2009 Ted Talk, Eric Topol shows how the convergence of several technologies will take medicine to the next level in prolonging our lives and increasing their quality.

The technologies that are bringing about this conversion:

·         Multiple billion cellphone users

·         Broadband 3g, soon to be 4g

·         Pervasive connectivity

·         Smartphones

·         Ingenious Sensors

Topol demonstrates how broadband-enabled smartphones can deliver real-time vitals data on a patient. "On your smartphone today, you check your email. In the future you will be checking all your vital signs," Topol says.

The entire point of information technology is to make our lives easier, to enable effective data transmission, leverage pooled resources and automate for the common good. Given Claris Networks’ extensive experience in the health and medical information technology industry, this is especially obvious to us. An article in Information Week by Marianne McGee pinpoints nine specific ways nationwide health IT adoption and electronic medical records systems will improve patient care.

1.       Mobile E-Prescribing

         “98,000 Americans die each year from preventable medical mistakes. E-prescribing applications allow doctors to check on patient's medication history, allergies, potential adverse interaction with other drugs,” ultimately saving lives.

The following infographic may not be the most easy to understand at first, so let me explain.

It shows the percentage of hospitals that adopted an aspect of EMRs from 2007 to 2010. It’s a very complicated couple of graphs that basically say, EMR’s aren’t a bandwagon. They’re a proven operational necessity that improve patient care.