Recently, I sat in on a 'roadmap' presentation from one of our partners that provides one of the PM/EHR software applications that we use for our clients.  The audience was current users of the system and they were getting a detailed look at not only the coming release due out later this year, but a sneak peak at what was planned for each of the four upgrades scheduled for 2012.

Roadmap discussions are generally fun - there were 'oohs and ahhs' as the users heard that coming improvements would fix things that didn't work, make things easier, and add new stuff, some of which they had not even been thinking about yet.  Issues with buggy releases will come at another day.

As I heard the plan for five releases, it was impressive the progress that is being made.  I had a similar reaction not long ago when another of our partners held the same kind of call.

But I also realized how fast late adopters are falling behind.  Many of the features discussed in the roadmaps require particular changes to how a practice operates.  Each are improvements, but each are changes.  For the practices in the room, these were incremental changes, a few each quarter, that would have to be absorbed.  Practices not yet in the game, however, are just accumulating more and more change that has to be swallowed all at once when they finally decide to pull the trigger.

We talk often to our clients that the EHR is not a one time event that 'ends' on the day of go-live, but rather the beginning of a never ending process to IT-enable the practice.  The foundation is just that - a foundation.  The evolution and change that sit on top of that foundation never stop.  Do you think manufacturing organizations that put in their big enterprise system 20 years ago have stopped making IT and process changes?  Hardly.

While the laggards ponder, many practices are quickly laying down tracks, moving further ahead of the pack every 90 days.