There’s a medical app for that—or not
Mobile software is part of the most important movement in health care. Will government regulators suffocate it?
Even the most ideologically opposed politicians agree: Health care is choking on paperwork, and medicine is prone to errors of handwriting, lost information and guesswork. That’s why the promotion of health information technology is one of the only demilitarized zones in Washington—consistently attracting bipartisan support since the Bush administration began funding ways to standardize and computerize health-care records a decade ago.
Despite such broad political support—plus that of health insurers, providers, drug companies and patient groups—the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) unfortunately has rushed in to play bureaucratic spoiler just as this new engine of innovation was leaving the station.
