Health Blog Q&A: Electronic Medical Records and Liability Risk
A law journal article argues digitized medical systems may bring doctors a whole new rash of medical malpractice worries.
How Pharmacists and the Internet Improved Hypertension Control
A Kaiser Permanente Colorado study looked at whether people using a home-based monitoring system better managed their high blood pressure.
Doctors and Health-Care Pros, Could the iPad Rock Your World?
How might Apple’s iPad fit into the world of health care?
Google CEO & Harvard Surgeon Talk Health IT
Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt doesn’t know why docs haven’t embraced databases to help them sort through medical information. Atul Gawande, the Harvard surgeon and New Yorker writer, suggested an explanation.
Gawande, who has a new book on the benefits of checklists, spoke yesterday to a meeting of a group that advises President Obama on science and technology. Schmidt is part of that group.
According to a blog post from the journal Science, Schmidt said:
So when you show up at the doctor with some set of symptoms, in my ideal world what would happen is that the doctor would type in the symptoms he or she also observes, and it would be matched against the data in this repository. Then this knowledge engine would use best practices, and all the knowledge in the world to give physicians some sort of standardized guidance. This is a generalized form of the checklists that you’re talking about …
As computer scientists, this is a platform database problem, and we do these very, very well, as a general rule. And it befuddles me why medicine hasn’t organized itself around these platform opportunities.
Gawande’s explanation, as quoted in the Science blog:
I think part of the bafflement occurs because the folks who know how to make such systems don’t understand how the clinical encounter actually operates.
In particular, Gawande said, a database is likely to return more information than a clinician could make sense of during a patient visit when there are “15 minutes to manage six problems.” Still, he added, the right kind of apps for “for your iPhone or whatever the new Google one is” (ouch!) could be useful for doctors.
This sort of discussion has been going on for years, but it has added urgency these days because over the next few years the federal government will pay doctors and hospitals tens of billions of dollars to start using electronic medical records.
At some point, an archived Webcast of yesterday’s panel meeting will be available here.
Image: iStockphoto
For Electronic Records, an ER Brings in the Scribes
Cost is a big reason that doctors and Hospitals have been slow to adopt electronic medical records. But it’s not the only one; among other issues, some docs worry that typing information into a computer will make it harder for them to have a good conversation with the patient — to develop a rapport, to figure out what’s really going on.
This morning’s USA Today describes a solution the emergency room at the University of Virginia Medical Center came up with after going nearly paperless last fall: People who follow the doctor around from patient to patient, entering information into a laptop. Sort of like a real-time version of dictation, a tried-and-true system for getting doctors’ notes into patient records. The hospital calls them scribes and docs, apparently, like the system.
“I can sit and really listen to the patient, instead of scribbling notes while I’m talking to them,” one doctor told the paper.
Still, it’s hard to imagine scribes really catching on. For one thing, the article notes, there’s the chance that the scribe could introduce an error into the chart (though doctors check over the entries). For another, electronic medical records are supposed to make health care more efficient — and how efficient can it be to pay people to follow doctors around, typing into laptops?
Photo: iStockphoto
Mobile Medicine: An iPhone for Every Doctor?
A broad trend in technology and health: Taking data from patients, wherever they are, and getting it to doctors and nurses, wherever they are.
As we’ve noted before, lots of big tech companies like Intel, Google and IBM are trying to figure out how to gather data from patients when they’re at home, so that doctors and nurses can intervene to reduce the risk of hospitalizations and complications.
At the same time, the companies that make smart phones are trying to figure out how to make patient data mobile for doctors and nurses. That push is perhaps inevitable, given the growth of smart phones, the tech industry’s push into health care and doctors’ and nurses’ longstanding use of Palms and other PDAs as medical reference tools.
A story in this morning’s WSJ has a few examples of medical smart-phone apps:
Stanford Hospital is working with Apple and the health IT shop Epic to test software that lets doctors access patient charts on the iPhone.
The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center recently handed out BlackBerrys to doctors and nurses in a few units. Besides using the devices to communicate with each other, the staff will also be trying out software for the devices, including a program that sends EKG images and patient data from hospital-bound ambulances to the BlackBerry, to give the hospital staff advance knowledge of who is coming in the door.
More than 100 hospitals are using an app that lets obstetricians monitor maternal and fetal data remotely on their iPhones, via a special server.
Image via A.D.A.M.
‘Crazy Moms’ Find It Easy to Squeeze In Exercise
Last September, Brigette Polmar and Jenny Hein were doing the coffee and girl talk thing on Hein’s porch in Ashburn when the duo had an incredible revelation: They both regularly did squats while styling their hair.
Is It Swine Flu? Don’t Ask: Doctors Usually Can’t Tell for Sure.
Sheila Morris is almost certain her 13-year-old son Evan got the H1N1 influenza virus at summer camp two weeks ago — but she’ll never know for sure. And neither will the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
GOP Outnumbered in Senate, but McConnell Tries to Ensure It Is Not Outflanked
When he was fighting campaign finance reform a decade ago, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was dubbed Darth Vader by his critics. He embraced the nickname, even announcing “Darth Vader has arrived” at a news conference.
Their Parents’ Keepers: Children Who Care for Elders Often Find It Rewarding
My father and I were waiting in the director’s office for our tour to begin. With a recent haircut, he looked almost dapper despite the two hearing aids.
