Two most important things in Health Care IT nobody realizes yet.

I wanted to put down two things that have me excited about the next year in health care that others may not have been aware of or considered important.  As we have seen repeatedly over the last few years the game can and will change very rapidly in any industry.  Whether it be Facebook, the iphone, Groupon, or Yelp companies or products that we seemingly can’t live without can rise to prominence almost overnight.  In health care we have yet to see that player emerge that suddenly combines all the things that make magic happen for the user.  I am hoping we see the beginnings of that company in 2011. 

My two cents.

1.  Aza Raskin moves into Health Care IT.   Aza,  the creative lead behind much of the magic in Firefox 4,  resigned last week to pursue the humanization of health care with a presumably well financed health care startup called Massive Health.  To have someone of this caliber set their sights in a sector that seems hell bent on funneling millions of dollars into software and projects that focus on rules and regulations while almost completely ignoring the user or any semblance of basic design concepts is a very important step in the right direction.  I couldn’t be more happy to see someone like this throw his hat into the ring.  From my experience being a part of Summit Series over the last 18 months I know the value of someone with his kind of talent focusing on health care and most importantly the user of technology.  

2. Y Combinator dipping its toe into Health Care IT and the EHR space. Why is it that young entrepreneurs, innovators, or the hacker community feel like Health Care is off limits for some reason?  This may be the first step in getting young entrepreneurs looking for the next great software idea to finally take a long hard look at the huge opportunities in health care.  I often joke that part of the reason health care IT is so bad is because it takes 10 years for doctors to finish their training.  Simply put we just don’t have any 24 year old doctors.  We often feel like we went into a hospital in our early 20s and exited 10 or 15 years later.  Medical School and Residency are just not geared for innovators and it isn’t creative training in the slightest.  So just to have terms like EMR,  EHR, and Meaningful Use start to percolate through the halls of a place as important as YC in Mountain View I think is a huge step in setting into motion the future of health care.