A recent article in the Wall Street Journal reviewed the emerging role of email in healthcare, arguing that doctors should more aggressively offer their patients the option to communicate with each other through email. Unlike other professionals in the United States, doctors have generally resisted the adoption of email into their practices. But according to the WSJ article, email can result in many benefits to both the doctor and patient. ...
Posts tagged Health IT
Why adoption of EHRs is a transformational event for physicians
Paul Conslato, MD, director of clinical affairs for Lancaster General Medical Group, recently was quoted in the PAMED Better Health Network eZine that the introduction of electronic health records is “the largest transformational event for physicians within the last 50 years.”Fifty years is a long time and takes us back into the 1960s. Certainly, there have been plenty of changes in the practice of medicine since then. We’ve seen ...
Why we need to go from e-patient to i-patient
I found a recent Associated Press article on an aspect of the new health care law that many of us may have overlooked. It requires consumer-friendly summaries of what insurance plans cover, a provision that now seems to be at risk. The insurance industry is up in arms about implementation costs and added regulatory burdens. (There’s a good story at NPR, which includes a link to an example of ...
Why EMR is a dirty word to many doctors
Don’t get me wrong, EMRs (electronic medical records) are inevitable. Over the long-run they are almost certainly good for physicians, patients and the healthcare industry.However, their origin and the ulterior motives currently driving their adoption is sowing the seeds of their failure. First, what is actually happening out there? The most recent CDC data would seem to be encouraging for EMR adoption, with EMR use (finally) passing 50%.Too bad ...
Why patients with implantable defibrillators deserve their data
The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, enacted as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, was signed into law on February 17, 2009.The objective of Measure 12/15 of Meaningful Use regulations of the HITECH act which refer to electronic health records, states that eligible professionals “provide patients with an electronic copy of their health information (including diagnostic test results, problem lists, medication ...
How adopting an EHR is like treating cancer
EHRs are not ready for prime time. EHR benefits are questionable and there are documented instances where patients’ deaths were directly attributed to an EHR. EHRs are cumbersome and slow. They are unnecessarily complex and built on very old technology. The people who build EHRs have no concern for the end user and therefore EHR usability is pretty abysmal. And EHRs are expensive to buy and expensive to maintain, not ...
How changing patient workflow can make using an EMR fun
One day, about 5 years into using the electronic medical record in my practice, I came to the realization that I wasn't having fun anymore. I was sitting throughout most of every office encounter facing a computer screen, my back to the patient on the exam table across the room. The joy of face to face interaction with people, the real reason I went into medicine in the first place, had been replaced with ...
Natural language processing in EMRs can improve disease tracking
Years ago, if you were elderly, had diabetes, high blood pressure, low back pain, needed a yearly flu shot and came to see this electronic health record-enabled physician (now with the nom de plume "Disease Management Care Blog"), you would have had your diabetes, high blood pressure and low back pain reassessed, you would have been given a flu shot and, for good measure, the DMCB would have tossed in a discussion ...
Repetition is the curse of the doctor-patient engagement
How many times as a doctor do you ask the same questions over and over again as part of the routine process of taking a history from your patient? And how often as a patient do you have to answer those same questions each time you see a new doctor? How long does this take, given that doctors and patients both complain that there is too little time for the ...
The Internet is where patients go for pre-visit consultations
As a physician, technology cannot replace you, but it can make you more efficient and effective.This was the message from Richard Satava, MD, who spoke on the future of surgical technology at the recent Seattle Surgical Society Annual Meeting. Dr. Satava's speech was fascinating as he laid out the future for robotics, remote surgery, internal locomotion actuators, molecular imaging biosurgery, etc. I looked over my shoulder a couple of times ...
Why the prognosis of patients is difficult
Many clinical decisions in older persons are dependent on life expectancy. For example, as life expectancy declines, cancer screening is likely to do more harm than good. Also, persons who have limited life expectancy may want to plan, discuss their values, and consider palliative care approaches of care in addition to care focused on living as long as possible.But can one actually predict life expectancy accurately in an individual patient? ...
Should Google censor anti-vaccine claims?
One of the reasons there is such a movement against vaccines is the democratization of information, perpetuated by search engines like Google.Do a search for "autism" and "vaccines," for instance, and you'll be greeted with a wealth of information linking the two, despite the fact that any connection has been scientifically disproven.A fascinating piece in Slate asks whether search ...
When patients see their medical record
Traditionally, the patient chart stayed in the doctors office and rarely did a patient get a glimpse of anything in the record. Photocopying the chart is expensive and no physician would let a chart leave her office because the record must be held safely for a minimum of 7 years. Now more and more offices are doing away with clunky paper charts and electronic medical records are becoming the ...
Google knows more about certain diseases than physicians ever will
Professor Gunter Dueck, is a calm and eloquent german mathematician who’s also the CTO of IBM Germany. He studied mathematics and philosophy and eventually turned out to be a great writer and speaker. Unfortunately he only does so in German, which is why it doesn’t make much sense to post a video of him here.In a recent talk he gave (German only), he talks about whether a connected and ...
A guide for entrepreneurs to get a doctor’s attention
I've had the luck to attend medical school in the city of San Francisco during what will be looked back on as the start of transformational change in our health care system. My growing interest in technology and new business models as the disruptive forces behind this change, as well as marriage to a technology entrepreneur, has me frequently rubbing elbows with movers and shakers in the digital health space. ...
Motivate physicians through technology
In the modern medical environment of unpaid insurance claims, malpractice lawsuits and rushed patient encounters, many doctors feel unmotivated and unhappy.Could the use of improved healthcare technology make doctors feel motivated and fulfilled again?The hierarchy of needsMotivating others is always difficult task. But according to Dan Heath, author of Made to Stick, all employers need to do to effectively motivate employees is get out of the basement – Maslow’s basement ...
Using a mobile app to help chronic pain
The sore back. The stiff knee. The aching hand. More than 50 million Americans suffer from these and many other forms of noncancerous chronic pain. Treatments recommended for chronic pain include physical therapy, exercise, cognitive behavioral therapy, meditation, medication, a wide range of alternative therapies and other measures. Often it is not easy to tell how effective a treatment is because most patients do not carefully monitor changes in their ...
Distance medicine will transform medical practice
Distance medicine technologies can be disruptive in the way physicians and other care givers interact with patients and with each other and can fundamentally change how patients are able to interact with the entire health care system. This is of increasing relevance as medicine gravitates toward chronic illnesses where diagnosis and treatment are complex and require multi-specialist teams. It also has potential to alleviate some of the effects of the ...
Designing a friendly patient portal for consumers
More and more providers see the value of providing patient portals. In an attempt to be responsive, EMR vendors are providing patient portals that have some limited capabilities (get lab results, email your doctor and possibly fill out a form requesting an appointment). However, just as the ability to design an airplane cockpit is radically different from a car dashboard, so to is designing an EMR geared towards medical professionals ...
Solving information overload in the EHR
I have been using electronic health records now for over 10 years. Like most physicians who have used EHRs, I would not ever go back to a paper-based medical record.Having said that, it is important to recognize some of the potential problems created by some EHR products. One potential pitfall of some EHRs is the number of steps it takes to find information that is in the system. Yes, it ...
