[tom_b]

GUI and visualization tools seem to be an afterthought for the big EHR vendors. Peeling the surface layers off of EHR systems, it seems they are essentially big ERP systems with a medical bent. So they require multitudes of system-building consultants, nine figure purchase prices, and a bigger focus on making sure billing/procedure auditing can be done by administrators than facilitating MD/patient dataflow.

FTA: "why wasn’t the EHR already doing the legwork, displaying these potentially pertinent correlations and data points, painting a more descriptive clinical picture, instead of leaving me to wade through mounds of information?"

Because the focus of the EHR system is about billing and tracking medical record treatment for hospital administrators (auditing) rather than enhancing clinical treatment and understanding for MDs?

Probably a large opportunity here to do cool and better GUI and visualization, but good luck getting past the EHR vendor guard dogs to even read-only access the back-end data.

[andyzweb]

>but good luck getting past the EHR vendor guard dogs to even read-only access the back-end data.

I've had first hand experience with this. If you're going to build a startup in this area it is important to be a stealth mode as possible. It's also important to have a budget for legal services and LegalZoom™ won't cut it.

[sizzle]

I thought it was also because, quite simply, the people building the systems lack the medical acuity/intuition/formal education to even begin to know the best way to display information intuitively towards the perspective of working physicians.

Then the lack of incentives/competitors allows them to stagnate while other industries constantly iterate platforms against each other to the benefit of society.