More Find EHRs a Hot Investment

The market for electronic health records is heating up, according to the Wall Street Journal blog Digits. Salesforce.com has bought a stake in a small EHR company. The company joins Google, Microsoft and even Wal Mart -- which this year "said it had partnered with Dell and . . . eClinicalWorks to sell an EMR from its Sam's Club stores," Digits reported -- in the market, which has been fueled by President Obama's stimulus package.

The big federal stimulus bill passed earlier this year includes some $30 billion in incentives for doctors and hospitals to buy and use electronic medical records. The funds are likely to drive lots of growth, particularly given that most docs still use paper records.