On Top of Mt. Fuji

July 4 began with a breakfast meeting to discuss cloud computing with Japanese industry leaders.   Japanese industry is ready to provide cloud solutions, but there are policy and adoption barriers including privacy protection, service level guarantees, and general distrust of the internet as a transport mechanism for healthcare data.     To explore these barriers, I visited the Japanese Medical Association for lunch and had a remarkable discussion while walking in the Rikugien Gardens.   I spent the afternoon with policymakers at the Japanese Ministry of Health, Welfare and Labor.    We reviewed the Beth Israel Deaconess clinical systems, Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative Quality Data Center and  the Massachusetts Health Information Highway as examples of private/public collaboration for public health, population health, and care management cloud-based applications. The meeting ended at 3:30pm I took a taxi to the Shinjuku West Bus Terminal where my Japanese hiking partner (Dr. Nagata) and I exchanged our business suits for hiking gear.   After stashing our computers and luggage in a locker we boarded the Fuji bus carrying water, food (onigiri rice balls), and the appropriate clothing we'd need to climb the 12,376 foot Mt. Fuji in rain, light snow, and freezing temperatures.   I travel internationally with carry on baggage, so I had to be very minimalistic in choosing the hiking gear to bring.Our plan was to do a "bullet climb" -...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs