Being a CIO these days is like climbing a mountain. And no one knows that better than John Glaser, CIO at Partners Healthcare which operates several Boston-area hospitals. He is a tough skeptic when it comes to the push for electronic health records. At a time when some electronic services are growing in popularity, he says that eHealth records will not change health habits or cut costs anytime soon. "IT can mitigate costs but not solve the cost problem," he says. Nevertheless, his company is heading toward eHealth records like most other big health companies.

The jury is still out on whether this is the way that health IT should be going. For every 10 patients who have access to a digital health record, he estimates that only one on average will look at it, so consumers won't drive eRecord adoption. At the same time, Glaser says eHealth records can improve and cut costs if handled properly. Like many other tools in the IT world, however, the electronic health record remains in its infancy with plenty of growing pains still to be experienced. Nevertheless, Partners Healthcare is requiring doctors to begin developing plans to use eHealth records in January 2008 or be dropped from the network. Glaser still thinks eHealth records have a place in the future, but it will be years before they become the norm. And it will be decades before a majority of Americans have eHealth records--not 2014, as President Bush set as a goal three years ago. Progress will happen, he says. "There will be different levels of pain, and a form of chaos, before order,"

For more on the future of eHealth records:
- Check out this InformationWeek Article