I know that I spend far too much time talking, writing, tweeting, posting, commenting, obsessing over everything EMR and Healthcare IT related, but doing so has had some interesting consequences when it comes to certain words or abbreviations. Let me give you some examples of Healthcare IT words or abbreviations that have been tainted one way or another.
Meaningful – I honestly can’t even use this word any more. Meaningful Use has ruined the word meaningful for me. I definitely can’t use the word meaningful in healthcare anymore without cringing. It’s like a permanent built in pun for meaningful now. Plus, meaningful just isn’t meaningful anymore because it’s been used so much. Meaningful will be forever tainted in my vocabulary.
PHR – I expect we’re going to see the general death of the word PHR. Too many failed EHR softwares have ruined this word. I’m sure we’ll still have many of the functions and features that PHR software offers and many PHR software will be around, but we’re going to see a new branding of what they do. Yesterday I heard one called Patient Relationship Management (PRM I guess) which could be a good replacement for the tainted PHR term.
mHealth – This word is a bit like PHR in that we’re still going to see plenty of mobile health, but I think the term mHealth is going to go away. Eventually mobile will just be an extension of healthcare IT and healthcare in general. We’ll still see some residual naming, but most won’t differentiate.
I’m sure there are a lot more. What other healthcare words or abbreviations have lost life for you?
