Interfaces for many role-playing computer games like World of Warcraft are light-years ahead of any EHR technology:
Really good role-playing games–such as Dungeon Siege, Neverwinter Nights, or World of Warcraft–have what is commonly referred to in game design circles as a “paper-doll/drag-and-drop interface,” which graphically depicts the state of your character and allows you to drag and drop information. I envision the patient’s information in the PHR appearing like this.
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Too few doctors play computer games.
A bigger problem is that the computer geniuses that design EHRs have no idea what doctors do. They are convinced (as are some game desginers) that more is always better.
If computer folks followed us around for a week, they would know what we need (and we don’t) in an EHR. If they played more games, they would know where to look for a decent interface.
That sounds like an EHR that would transform the way we use information cognitively–not just a different way to store and display the same text descriptions. Like the difference between a drawing of a room and a text description of a room. I can see the doctor of the future working on a screen with a human body depicted, and with various icons that give general information about that organ system, pending studies, overall condition, currency of information–and which when clicked draw up 3-d images of imaging studies detaile graphical summaries of lab studies, and time-line indexed symptom reports.
EHR is DOA and proposing a new interface or blaming the developers reveals avoidance of the real issue.
Until physicians are paid more to keep the patient healthy than to treat illness, documentation is a liability rather than an asset. To the majority of doctors, it’s $64.00 for everyone who walks in the door. The more bodies that go by, the more the register rings. The game is money.
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