Google and MS Question Obama's EHR Plan

Surprise, surprise, Google and Microsoft urged ONCHIT head Dr. David Blumenthal to promote web-based EHR records. Despite my cynical opening sentence, I believe that they might be right to do so. As this article notes, the current HIT infrastructure connects to a hodge-podge of proprietary databases. The problem is that technical and legal barriers (among others) prevent those databases from easily talking to one another. Additionally, ARRA funds are geared more towards EHR adoption than data sharing, and so rather than getting actual records, patients might see something more akin to patient record "summaries". My view: gettng patients and docs to use EHRs but restricting data sharing is taking 2 steps forward and 1 step back. Quality improvement is all about the data!