Should doctors care about your address?
If there’s anything I like, it’s pushing the envelope a little. Not too much, mind you. Just the right amount. I think I did a good job with the title of this blog post. It’s a bit provocative, but I suspect I won’t get too much hate mail. It’s an odd question, really. Should your […]
An ounce of prevention
Benjamin Franklin once said that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure…”
You can’t always get what you want
A meme was shared on the Twitter machine last week that caught my eye. It’s the very frequently-used photo of a young man walking with his girlfriend at his side, but instead of making eye contact with her, he’s looking at a different woman walking in the other direction. His girlfriend is not amused. Yeah, […]
The enigma of the edge case in healthcare
Recently I tweeted about an article dealing with artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare (as one does). The author noted that an AI can often be well trained to deal with the vast majority of standard cases it might encounter. For example, a symptom checker can typically offer the “correct” follow-up given a specific set of […]
Why we do what we do
With my clinical informatics hat on, I spend my time working with physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals trying to get the best results from advanced technology for patients and those who care for them. This often entails configuring order sets, documentation templates, and clinical decision support tools, all while trying to find the sweet […]
Everything old is new again
There are many ways to describe the concept that humans seem to be reliving the same problems with the same bad solutions over and over. Jonathan Swift (or maybe it was Winston Churchill or perhaps Mark Twain) said that “everything old is new again.” Writer and philosopher George Santayana wrote that “those who cannot remember […]
Must EHRs become platforms?
I recently read a thought-provoking Forbes article arguing that the market-leading electronic health records (EHRs) of today could not possibly remain as we know them in the future. The author posited that government interoperability regulations and information blocking rules will force open the walled garden that some large vendors have created. He argues that all […]
Spelunking through the medical chart
Earlier this month, I had the privilege (honor? Thrill?) to attend the in-person annual physician IT leadership meeting organized by AMDIS. If you’re not aware of the group, the Association of Medical Directors of Information Services has traditionally been composed of CMIOs and now CHIOs, with a sprinkle of physicians who are CIOs thrown it. […]
Primary care is an essential part of a usable healthcare system
Last month, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine published Implementing High Quality Primary Care: Rebuilding the Foundation of Health Care. This is an update of their 1996 report Primary Care: America’s Health in a New Era. (Both of these can be downloaded with a free account from the National Academies Press.) In this new book, the researchers acknowledge that […]
Patient identifiers: A solution whose time has come
Last month, Nordic joined prominent healthcare systems, physician groups, and healthcare information technology (HIT) vendors to sign onto CHIME-sponsored letters to Senate and House leaders regarding support for patient identification tools in the United States. To understand why such a letter was necessary, it’s important to appreciate how we got here.