I attended a Health IT breakfast event the other week. The panel consisted of a number of seasoned Health IT entrepreneurs, with very similar messages. One of the major themes of the night was the need to have opensource EMR software that are compatible from one hospital setting to another. The problem is similar to that of the PHR market. Too many fragmented and proprietary systems that cannot speak to each other. Luckily, there are a few companies out there that are taking the steps to build free open source systems that can be built upon. This opens up the healthcare system and gives entrepreneurs to build tools on top of the platform, with actual utility. Theres no need to reinvent the wheel. Patients and doctors need to be able to share information between different practices, insurance companies, and pharmacies to cut health care costs. Repeat procedures can be cut down, eliminating waste, and thus bringing down the cost of care for the whole system.

Everyone knows something about Obama’s plan to digitize medical information, and everyone knows that the government is setting aside billions of dollars to enact the HITECH bill, but how do you get access to that money. The panelists and people in the audience seems to be very optimistic that in the year 2011, this bill will have a wide sweeping impact on the Health IT world and are mobilizing to be prepared for that money.

Overall, I think the message to investors was Health IT is going to be a very lucrative industry to invest in in the near future. I’m excited to see whats in store. I am also excited to see what will happen when private equity makes its way to many more of these Health IT startups.