Mr. Chopra is definitely a cheer leader and has the ideas going in the right direction and offers some good ideas and examples of where they are going and how the challenge programs are working to bring those to the table for the challenge.
He mentions Epocrates and says he doesn’t know a doctor today that doesn’t have this available on their phone or on their computer – well that’s good for him but back to the real world here where I also promote this and try to persuade doctors to use it, I find quite a few that are not using it, so everything in who’s talking I guess on certain topics. Yes, it would be nice to have all doctors using Epocrates 
as I have it on my phone for look up as a patient, but the point I’m making here is that we have folks, both patients and doctors not up to this level yet.
VA Can Now Use the “Blue Button” to Download Their Data from Their PHR (Personal Health Record)
Reference is made to the new Telehealth network launched in California, see the link below.
Nation’s Largest Telehealth Network Launches-California Telehealth Network With Governor Schwarzenegger & Aneesh Chopra
I share in his enthusiasm and understand where the focus is and where it all needs to go and what the results will be. I still think we need better collaboration as we have a lot of duplication coming out along with innovation, so the key is to get folks together that are working on the same goals with software. He does mention that the payment system is a big hurdle. Who’s going to write the Killer King algorithm?
Aneesh Chopra: Build Database of Business Rules For States to Use To Determine Eligibility–Is This A First Step Towards a “Department of Algorithms”?
You can read more about the NHIN he references at the link below. I added some related information at that post.
Office of the National Coordinator Awards Lockheed Martin $9 Million to Create Real World Model of Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN)
Now we have one side of the picture and Mr Chopra does a good job and has the 
enthusiasm, but as I mention in my off the wall post below, we have a lot of other areas of life touching on all of this, implementation is a big one. It has to be useable and acceptable and there are folks addicted to the chase too. Balance and working with private industry is also needed upfront. Again, I like all of this but also realize that when we have too much on our plate at once we may end up with nothing. Visions are great but we need to get there and bring the clinical aspect into the mix. As he says, he’s the tech guy and we need the whole picture
I learned this when writing code too as sometimes I thought I had the killer application but the doctor didn’t like it, or it needed modification. Sometimes we were in complete agreement and enthusiasm on both sides, but then after a while he didn’t use part of it anymore that I thought really showed value. That stuff happens in the best of cases.
When you listen to Bill Gates, who is also an optimist we get a lot of the same, but 
he’s also a businessman and kind of fades in that direction to combine with a little different perspective and shows a bit more of human are of caring/concern when speaking versus the hard core data value talk. There’s nothing wrong with this when the crowd is data people as they understand and I have even caught myself at times speaking too hard core data requirements at maybe the wrong times, but today more than ever with losing a lot of human values out there, ethics counts big time and should not be forgotten, otherwise people will start shooting servers, like this guy did this week. Don’t laugh as this could be the way folks retaliate without digital literacy.
Worker Gets Drunk and Shoots Server With 45 Magnum–Server Was Packing a Full Artillery of Blades To Defend Itself
Yes I get excited too when I see what value data brings but I try not to forget the human element of all of this and the real need to bring about Health IT literacy from our Congress on down, as they don’t have it either and thus we have no role models and just a bunch of politicians. Bill Gates was funny too in how he described this recently too. If you want his perspective use the link below, and it’s another quite lengthy video, but again well worth watching. BD