Electronic Medical Records and Data Centers
So I got interested in this because all I can think of doing at the moment is complaining about my wisdom teeth, which are currently so infected the doctor told me it could spread to my brain. It is not a pleasant situation. I've been spending a lot of time in various doctor's and dentist's offices, which got me thinking about how last spring the Obama administration announced that now is the time for medical records to be completely switched from paper to electronic.
Does anyone know if this is affected by the recent healthcare events? Anyway, people have had mixed feelings about this 
decision to completely digitize medical records, but of course, a lot of medical facilities definitely already do these things electronically. I don't think I've been to a doctor that didn't in years. It's the way of the future to shift towards more and more things being electronic, and it seems natural that soon all such official records will be. I think the increased convenience and accessibility is really important, although there is an argument that that same accessibility will enable drug companies to use our private records for their gain... which is not so great.
This all ties into the data center industry because the increase in electronic records means an increase in data center space in use by medical facilities. This article and video from Data Center Knowledge sheds a bit more light on the situation. It brings up the issue of criticality, which would be a really big deal in an emergency room, life-or-death situation... downtime could actually go from mainly being inconvenient and embarassing, to occasionally fatal.
The Green Gorilla wonders what the effect is on the environment either way. More data centers using more power, or more paper using more trees? Carbon emissions will be involved either way. Electronics will, of course, win out in the end, but the time-frame before they do is still of interest.
-Elizabeth English
photo by Jessica Mullen under flickr creative commons license
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