Writer’s Block is an interesting thing. I always have something to say and I used to be able to write with a certain sense of ease, but for a while, the words just haven’t flowed as easily as they once did. Maybe Thanksgiving here in the United States made me realize I had a lot to be thankful for. Was it the pandemic? Was it work or life that got in the way? Either way, the words just didn’t flow as easily. A close friend of mine, who lived in my ancestral city of Bangalore, India who was only 48 years old at the time, passed away in late 2020 of COVID related symptoms. He missed getting the vaccine by months. That is still hard to recover from and I was thinking of him this weekend as he would’ve turned 50. Google (screen shot, thank you Google) told me that 6.63 million people died of Covid related symptoms so it gives me pause.
It’s been a busy 2 and a half years. Healthcare providers have faced a challenge like never before. Healthcare across the United States has been hit hard financially by fewer patients coming in for elective surgeries and needing to get back to financial shape, not to mention nursing/staffing shortages and supply chain challenges that have strained everyone. In the meantime, we rolled out Telehealth in record time of weeks back in 2020 just after we all locked down. Work was done that would have normally taken several months now was done, within a few weeks and providers were all on board with no push back, which normally would have been the case. At the end of the day. we prevailed and will continue to prevail because we must prevail. We have so much work to do. HIMSS Global Conference in April of 2023 is in Chicago, Illinois and I will be there in my capacity as a HIMSS Chapter Board Member. Until then, I plan to focus on areas such as India’s focus on it’s national digital mission and it’s Unified Health Interface. During my visit to Bangalore, I plan to connect with physicians and Healthcare IT advocates to understand both the opportunities and challenges to this ambitious initiative and see how we can learn from it here in the United States and elsewhere. Stay tuned world. I’m back!
Healthcare Interoperability 