Healthcare is changing fast in the United States, and many industry providers are scurrying to keep up. Citrus Health Network, a behavioral/mental health organization, is striving to create a system that will make it easier for healthcare providers to access and use patient electronic health records. TheCUBE hosts Jeff Frick and Steve Kenniston sat down with Citrus Health Networks director of IT, Renato Nodarse, at EMC World 2014 to discuss the companys plans for the future of health care.

Citrus serves the Dade County and Broward County areas of Florida, providing behavioral health services. It utilizes VDI solutions from VMware and Vblock storage solutions from EMC to offer IT services to its 300 users, providing them with mobility and connectivity. The companys applications are 100 percent virtualized, from its SharePoint installation to its proprietary behavioral health application.

According to Nodarse, there is a different set of metrics for behavioral health and few software solutions out there are capable of doing those metrics effectively. Citrus wants to create a more streamlined system that connects behavioral health data with primary care data. Essentially, when healthcare providers access an electronic record for a patient, they will be able to view a patients entire medical history, including physical health care, rather than relying on the patients memory when they fill out forms.

Eventually, he said, everyone will have an electronic health record, and silos of information will merge. The healthcare industry will share health data universally, and the whole of a persons health history will be available to providers. The next step is to determine the best way to analyze and manage that Big Data. Nodarse talks about this and more in the full interview, which you can watch right here.

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Citrus Health Network aspires to implement universal health records