On Entrepreneurial Seizures in Health Care

I. Valdes writes “Linux Medical News has an essay on the phenomenon of ‘entrepreneurial seizures’ and why Free and Open Source Software in medicine is preferred: Michael Gerber in his book the E-Myth subtitled “Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It.” describes a phenomena that he calls an ‘entrepreneurial seizure’. This occurs when people working at a regular job suddenly drop everything and go into business for themselves, doing something they like, but frequently ending up working far harder than they did before and ultimately loathing (and failing at) the thing they used to enjoy.

The parallel with medical IT is obvious. So many in the past have had a health IT entrepreneurial seizure. A health IT entrepreneurial seizure can summed up with the following phrase: ‘We’ll get a bunch of money and some great programmers, go to work, and after a few years, show these dumb doctors how to really run an efficient practice using computers. We’ll be the Microsoft of Medicine!’“