Newt's Call To Arms

Whoever came up with the phrase, "Love him or hate him," could very well have been talking about Newt Gingrich. Neutrality is not something the former Speaker of the House, architect of the Contract with America and current chairman of his own consulting firm, is known for. But one thing's for sure: Everyone knows where the guy stands. And these days, where he's standing is smack in the middle of the latest technology revolution. Of course, talking to Gingrich about his IT vision is a challenge in and of itself. He is quite the busy man, to say the least. The interview runs a bit late thanks to a previous photo shoot; he apologizes when conversations are paused for phone calls or to ask an assistant

for the federal budget numbers for the past five years; and when Gingrich finally does offer his undivided attention, he's all over the map--hopping from U.S. life expectancy to the global market to the Avian Flu--strewn throughout with anecdotes about historical figures like Henry Kissinger and Henry Ford, and analogies such as when he describes Washington as a person pushing a car with four flat tires.

But what can one expect? The man who moved from public to private sector--for now--certainly has some big ideas.

And he's calling on the channel to take a leadership role in helping to revolutionize government in critical areas, including health care, education and homeland security. Gingrich has high expectations for the private sector to deliver and help make his visions a reality. His mantra: Don't take no for an answer.

Gingrich On Health Care

If there's any one area that has Gingrich's attention, health care is it. And if preparedness is lacking from legacy technology and processes, the state of health-care IT is downright archaic.

As founder of the Center for Health Transformation, dedicated to creating a modern health-care system, Gingrich advocates a nationwide health-care network with 1 percent of all federal discretionary funds to help make it happen. The best way to spend the money, he says, would be for Medicaid and Medicare to pay doctors a dollar extra for every electronic health record transaction; the promised financial gain would encourage doctors to buy the equipment and software, and be up and running in a matter of days. But keep it simple, and make sure it's standardized, he says.

"We should've established a national standard of interoperability for electronic health records a long time ago. Lock all the technical people in a room, give them two weeks with three meals a day, a third week with two meals a day and a fourth week with one meal a day. Sometime in the third or fourth week, they'd figure it out." Gingrich might not be entirely serious--but he swears he's not entirely joking either. After all, he negotiated a tri-state water project as Speaker in less than 24 hours by locking all interested parties up in a room on a Saturday until 2:30 in the morning. "Henry Kissinger once told me that every major decision he's been involved in took 48 hours, tops; you never knew when the 48 hours started, but it never took more than that."

It seems that the 48 hours required to make Gingrich's health-care vision a reality may be just about to begin. In November, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded four contracts to develop prototypes for a nationwide health-information network architecture that enables the exchange of electronic health-care information among disparate systems (see "Health Care Moves Ahead").

With so much yet to be accomplished in terms of IT, health care holds the biggest potential for integrators.

"If you look at truly automating on-demand patient records, which would, in turn, make them available to any health-care professional, the opportunities then lie in the management software, the wireless technology, all of the security and encryption, and training," says Alan Bechara, president of Chantilly, Va.-based PC Mall Gov. "From a private-sector perspective, there are huge opportunities."