Can EHRs be like e-mail? Good and Free.

There is one way to measure the popularity of an EHR.

If you look at the section of Google ads on the right column of our meaningfuluseok.com website, you will see a bunch of EHRs companies advertising their goods and services.

The way Google ranks those ads gives you an idea of the popularity of the product. Google gives the first place not to those companies who pay more but to those companies whose ads attract more clicks.

I have been following the ranking of the ads for the last 2 months and there is one clear winner in popularity: PRACTICE FUSION, the free Web-based EHR that claims to have 65,000 physicians already using its free product.

Now, of course if you go to their website: www.practicefusion.com, you will learn that they have been chosen as number 1 in customer satisfaction in several categories. Not an unusual claim for a home page, but then they cite the Brown-Wilson's annual Black Book Rankings, which is a very respected survey company.

So I am inclined to believe that PRACTICE FUSION is a wavemaker.

What does this mean for the future? Will doctors be able to achieve Meaningful Use without spending a penny? Will more companies copy the model? Will ads be enough to support the model? After all pharmamoney is over 1 trillion dollars per year. That amount can certainly buy a lot of ads in free ad-based EHRs.

I don't have answers. I just have questions.

Barnaby Jara