Wal-Mart looking to join digital health records market
Dominating retailer Wal-Mart is looking to follow in the footsteps of Google, Microsoft and other companies who are looking to get into the digital health records market.
Sindya Bhanoo reported in The Industry Standard that Wal-Mart is planning to bring its low-cost, high-volume methods to the healthcare industry by offering a deal that consists of hardware, software, installation, maintenance and training to modify a doctor’s office from using paper to digital medical records.
Wal-Mart already operates a prescription program and an online pharmacy, and the company recently launched an internal e-health initiative. The program allows more than 1.4 million Wal-Mart employees to access their personal health records on the Web.
Wal-Mart could be competing with the likes of Google, GE and Microsoft, all of whom have announced products and services relating to digital health records space.
President Barack Obama’s recent $19 billion-dollar allocation in the stimulus package to digitize electronic medical records has many companies looking to compete. The New York Times reports that there may also be incentives of $40,000 per physician to install and utilize digital health records.
During his presidential campaign, Obama promised to digitize every health record in the country by 2012.
Independent studies from Harvard, RAND and the Commonwealth Fund found that a national health records system will cost from $75 billion to $100 billion over the next 10 years, reported CNN.com.
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