Behind the times?

OJAI, Calif.—I’ve just learned of the Society for Exorbitantly Expensive and Difficult to Implement EHR’s (SEEDIE), which describes itself as ” healthcare IT standards organization that is completely funded and operated by a select group of proprietary electronic health record vendors.”

According to this beautifully designed site, “Unlike independent, objective, professional organizations created to help medical professionals select and implement interoperable EHR solutions, SEEDIE promotes healthcare IT systems that play well in the sandbox if, and only if, it is in the best interests of a particular vendor.” A picture of a smiling young girl has nothing to do with EHRs, “but it does register a 10 on the warm and fuzzy meter.”

A fictional vendor called Extormity (“Expensive, Exasperating, Exhausting”) already has earned SEEDIE certification. The company’s logo depicts two intersecting highways with exit ramps that don’t actually connect to anything. I’m guessing there aren’t too many people laughing in executive suites of software companies in, say, Kansas City or Madison, or perhaps Alpharetta, Ga., Malvern, Pa., or Waukesha, Wis. Just throwing some town names out there.

This apparently is not new; the Extormity site has a 2003 copyright and SEEDIE has 2007. But I just found out about it from EHI Europe. A Google search on “seedie” turned up 11,200 results, including links to several other HIT blogs that have written about it. Where have I been?