Enjoyed your interview with The PACS Designer and was prompted by my research curiosity to investigate one of the blogs that TPD mentioned in his interview. Do not mean to jump the blog-ship, but I found Microsoft’s Healthblog to be a great broad-spectrum media but I prefer the more focused HIS community, my kindred cohorts.

Must admit that I am usually to busy to read blog yak-yak, but I have made exception with HIStalk because I find it legitimately insightful. Albeit my sentiments, I felt compelled to blog respond to Dr. Crounse, Worldwide Health Director, Microsoft Corporation:

http://blogs.msdn.com/healthblog/archive/2007/09/28/the-dawn-of-a-new-era-for-people-who-care-about-health.aspx

# re: The Dawn of a New Era for People Who Care about Health
Saturday, September 29, 2007 8:37 AM by The Alchemist

Dr. Crounse,

Believe that I am one of the rare individuals in eHealth that favors and promotes accreditation of health web sites. The contemporary health web site has been defined by the folks at URAC. (For those who are not familiar with URAC, google it)

Rationale for accreditation: well, Jayco has not addressed the need for oversight to protect health web site Users; URAC appears to have all the standards of best practice for securing and delivering medical content over the Internet and is a voluntary endeavor for those healthcare facilities that would like formal and standardized validation of their health web site practices. Accreditation would protect health enthusiasts from procuring questionable and down right incorrect healthcare opinions. Remember, Internet do no harm!

This is my rant and I’m sticking to it! Go URAC or maybe if HIMSS would like to pick up the gauntlet…

The Alchemist