Are Financial Services and Health Information Technologies Compatible?
The idea of fusing together electronic medical records and financial transaction systems may seem a bit of a stretch, adding layers of unnecessary complexity. Nevertheless, health insurance data are quite similar to medical banking data in three critical areas. First, patient privacy is paramount in both settings. Second, the structures of the databases are quite similar in that they both use a debit and credit system to tabulate cash flows and services rendered. Third, both health and financial services data are warehoused for quick storage and retrieval for a variety of different purposes.The IT architecture for the iPHR is health insurance claims data. This information systems architecture is as old as the banking technology, but not nearly as advanced. Banking IT was upgraded in the early 1980s to accommodate the rapid national adoption of consumer-friendly automatic teller machine (ATMs). The next step for an iPHR technology would be the ability to accommodate IHCs.One of the firs
