There's barely anything more frustrating than a fascinating discussion on HN and then folks start kicking around lingo and acronyms that you can't even Google because they could mean a million things.

So please, have mercy and cure my ignorance and explain what EMR means.

EMR is basically anything and everything related to the operation of a doctor's office and/or hospital. Think scheduling, patient records, ordering lab tests, sending prescriptions to the pharmacy, billing.... all of it. It's what your doctor is furiously typing data in to during your visit. They also include a lot of functionality designed to, among other things, make sure your doctor doesn't write you prescriptions for a drug cocktail that will kill you.

It's spoken about as a monolith because that's how it's sold -- there are maybe a dozen platforms in wide use (which are then usually customized by a system integrator for a big hospital). They do have every option you could possibly think of.

I'm not criticizing you here (you're not trying to do a medical startup), but anyone who is trying to do a medical startup needs to know a whole lot about EMR systems -- more specifically how they are bought and sold -- if they want to make any traction. All medical software flows through the EMR, and they are closed platforms by design.

Sure. Thank you for the explanation!

Best guess is Electronic Medical Record... I had to google it.

https://healthit.ahrq.gov/key-topics/electronic-medical-reco...