Digital health push woos tech firms

But the move turned out to be so costly that his business, which employs five physicians, ended up on financial life support.

Meantime, dozens of health-care research companies large and small are making their pitch to doctors, to provide patient-history systems where none currently exist at clinics, private practices and other medical offices.

The same time in an efficient system

"You've got all these disparate entities that have never been tied at the same time in an efficient system," said Rich Garnick, chief executive of Anthelio, a Dallas-based consultant in health information innovation.

There's no uniform code by which the medical community is operating, and no widely used software standard like Microsoft's Windows being used.

The health IT space is very specialized

"The health IT space is very specialized," Hamilton said. "If you look at their business model, they look at the horizonal."

Anthelio's Garnick says many medical professionals feel they don't have the time or the inclination to abandon their paper-based record-keeping, and they want the innovation built around them. They're as well looking to preserve patient privacy, which makes sharing of information difficult.

He adds that many entities, particularly doctors, aren't helping to keep costs down by insisting on extensively customizing their patient records. They're as well resisting changes to their work habits, regardless of the efficiency they could gain, and are forcing tech vendors to customize software to the way they do business.

"We had some pretty spectacular failures," said Dr. John Mattison, Kaiser's chief information officer. "The research for us was in effect a huge challenge."

Dr. Susan Rudd Bailey is one of three allergy specialists at a small practice in Fort Worth, Texas. She says the horror stories she hears from other doctors who have tried to convert to what the industry calls EHRs is enough to keep her and her colleagues from forging ahead "until we thoroughly have to." Federal subsidies are out of the question.

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