Lunch with Sermo's Dr. Daniel Palestrant here at #HIMSS10

I had the pleasure of having lunch with Dr. Daniel Palestrant (Founder and CEO of Sermo) today here at HIMSS10. We had a great discussions today and we talked about physician adoption of EHRs, the use of social media, the evolution of Sermo, our families, and many other interesting health IT topics. Given that the vast majority of physicians are not early adopters of technology, what has made Sermo so successful as an online physician community? It was a really fun discussion given my personal interests in social media and health information technology.

Yesterday, athenahealth and Sermo released data about "Enabling Physicians to Leverage Technology to Improve Patient Care." What do physicians really think about ARRA and HITECH? What are their opinions regarding EHRs and "meaningful use"? Are physician opinions polarized, or are they in unison on these topics? Let's wait to see what type of data athenahealth and Sermo release over the next several weeks.

Daniel shared some great insights about the practical needs of physicians as they relate to practice management, billing, clinical workflow, reimbursement, EHR usability, and more. Through Daniel, I also met Adam Sharp, MD, Chief Medical Officer of Sermo and Jonathan Bush, athenahealth's Chairman and CEO. Thanks again for your time today Daniel. It was a real pleasure to connect and I look forward to chatting again in the future.

Special thanks to HP for sponsoring me to attend and blog here at HIMSS10.