Hand tapping a smartphone showing a personal health records app

One-Click Social Network Access To NHS Personal Health Records And Electronic Medical Records

Jul 28, 2011

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One Click Health; Financial, Public Goods and Merchant Information On A Social Networking Infrastructure

One click health, financial, public goods information, and goods and services referrals, on a social networking website infrastructure (existing or created)… And, supported by inconspicuous advertising.

Summary

The developing nationwide, Not-for-profit Health Service, and the proposed national, digitally linked, non-profit providers of the Vista Total Health Network, are solutions to the problem of there NOT existing in the private sector a single HIT or healthcare “consumer intermediary” that demonstrates the dominance, influential or effectiveness that the VistA platform, and the Department of Veterans Affairs have, in the public sector.

This solution will:

● Facilitate a timely reengineering of the VA VistA platform (while preserving the functionality and business process at it core), into VistA 2.0 Open Source; and

● In the intervening 3-4 year time period between when that desirable result is achieved and now, it will facilitate a near immediate momentum for the adoption and installation of VistA FOIA throughout the non-profit provider healthcare universe; and

● Thereafter, it will facilitate the “unanimous” recommendation of the VistA Modernization Report regarding the necessary “parallel” operation of VistA FOIA and VistA 2.0; and

● Make a declaration and demonstration of immediate commitment, and financial capability (via an initial and a recurring access to credit capital markets) to underwrite the largest proportion the original expense and ongoing capital costs that will be necessary in order to insure, along side the indispensable credibility and Department of Veterans Affairs commitment to a “hands-on” role in establishing the initial, continuing and future integrity of a VistA 2.0 Open Source Core Ecosystem;

And, thereby, to help VA make possible the establishment “de-facto” of VistA FOIA and VistA 2.0 Open Source as the “standard” for HIT deployment, going forward that is supported by revenue sharing from inconspicuous advertising and substantial infrastructure created with non-recourse, more-than-competitive non-profit investor capital and unique, grandfathered, tax-advantaged investment, financial products (backed up by unencumbered US Treasury portfolio, securities) .

Project 76—An American Affair, Inc.

Follow @USASinglePayer

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12 responses to “One-Click Social Network Access To NHS Personal Health Records And Electronic Medical Records”

AlxHamiltn

September 1, 2011

Best Description of the CareCloud EHR Platform – EMR and HIPAA
Written by: John – john@emrandhipaa.com

Best Description of the CareCloud EHR Platform
Posted: 31 Aug 2011 09:44 AM PDT

In a post on EMR and EHR about Social Media and EMRs, Andre Vovan, MD MBA from Mitochon Systems offered an interesting insight into the comparison between EMR and social media.

Social media and EMR are a natural fit. Think about what social media really enables. The ablity to stay connected, following different strings of info/story weaved by connected people. Say for instance you and your friends went to the Grand Canyon, one person took pictures while the other did the cooking, planning, and was responsible for entertainment during the trip. When they try to retell the story to their friends, each will be able to add different aspect of the story and with social network platforms such as facebook, this is possible.

Now take the story above, and insert 2 doctors and change the trip taken to be a patient going from a diagnosis to a surgery and afterwards trying to tell other physician providers on went on. If we design the EHR with this capability, then medicine will be improved.

A social media version of electronic medical records would have EMHR, HIE and PHR as one product not as separate.

I know that this was actually Andre’s initial vision for Mitochon Systems EHR. He wanted to create an EHR that could bring a healthcare community together in this way. I’m sure he’ll keep grinding away until he can achieve that vision. I haven’t looked at the Mitochon Systems EHR recently, so I can’t say how close they are to achieving that dream, but when I read Andre’s description I couldn’t help but remember the demo of the CareCloud EHR platform.

Many of you might remember my previous (some might call scathing) post about the CareCloud EHR and an opposing view by David about the CareCloud EHR. That post and a recent trip to San Francisco made it possible for me to see the CareCloud EHR first hand.

I had a great time meeting with Albert Santalo and Mike Cuesta from CareCloud. That was good considering my previous devil’s advocate post about CareCloud. One thing is absolutely certain, Albert has a vision of what he wants CareCloud to be and he’s dead set on achieving that vision. I like that in a CEO and founder of a company.

When it comes to their EHR, I must admit that it kind of reminded me of a lot of other EHR out there. There were a few EMR subtleties that I noticed in the demo, but I can’t say I saw any real wow features that made it a must have EHR. Maybe a full demo and experience with the EHR would create a rainbow of EMR subtleties that would change my mind, but it was a relatively short demo.

Instead, the wow factor wasn’t in the EHR software, but was instead in the CareCloud platform that powers the EHR, PMS and CareCloud Community of users. The description above about an almost “social network of doctors” and the health stream of a patient seems like an apt description of what CareCloud has created. In fact, the social elements of the platform are integrated throughout all of the CareCloud software which makes for some really interesting possibilities.

The challenge that CareCloud has is that a social network or Care Platform if you prefer is only as good as the people and organizations that use that platform. If two doctors are seeing a patient, then both doctors need to be on the same platform to really see a lot of the benefits of a patient’s health stream.

I imagine this is part of the reason why CareCloud has to provide a solid PMS and EHR solution on top of the CareCloud platform. Doing so will seed the platform with users so that with each PMS/EHR sold the platform becomes that much more valuable.

It’s hard to predict the future. Maybe CareCloud won’t get outside of its Miami base and maybe they won’t reach their vision of a CareCloud platform (Maybe Andre and Mitochon Systems or some other HIT vendor will do it instead). However, I’m willing to predict that whether CareCloud wins the healthcare platform war or not, some company will create a healthcare platform like what CareCloud has started to create that will be too valuable not to participate.

Full Disclosure: Mitochon Systems is an advertiser on this site, but they didn’t know I was going to post Andre’s comment.

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AlxHamiltn

September 2, 2011

AlxHamiltn says:

September 1, 2011 at 6:41 pm
Health Informatics Forum

A Social Network for Health Informatics Professionals and Students

I THINK THAT YET WE DO NOT HAVE A PROPER ACTIONABLE STANDARD FOR EHR [ELECTRONIC HEALTH AND MEDICAL RECORDS ], do you agree?

Posted by Abbas Shojaee on August 17, 2011 at 8:22am in Electronic Health Records

In spite of so many years of great efforts, for healthcare interoperability (I mean specially in definition of EHR required standards) yet existing standards are far from being actionable for practical uses by software industry and current implementations are coming in exchange of extensive efforts and costs.

HL7 reference information model and CDA artifacts are great analyses of healthcare complexities, but to take an act on them, are disabling, I think due to the employing of a mixtures of methodologies, interacting in an unclear way. (e.g. several controversies and overlapping in definition of Activities, the entities subclasses and the way they act etc.)

OpenEHR, seems a great step ahead, with a much more clear, Reference Model and the concept of Archetypes, and two level modeling. Yet it contains traces of gradual development. That means some early definition are preserved for backward compatibility while they deserve better implementation in a more elegant style with later developments. It also gets more inconvenient for physical implementation.

In my opinion, both standards have mixed up the implementation perspective in conceptual abstract layer, and at the same time failed caring of software development best practices. Maybe a call for more clear, light weighted, easy to capture and implement standard, is needed.

I think this might happen, with a fresh radical approach that learns from both standards, but leaves the burden of legacy designs.

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AlxHamiltn

September 2, 2011

“Our EMR is So Slow” – EMR and HIPAA

“Our EMR is So Slow”

Posted: 01 Sep 2011 03:28 PM PDT By john@emrandhipaa.com via google.com to me

Many of you might remember my recent post about EMR Performance Issues (ie. EMR Slowness). Turns out, the post had a pretty big impact on some readers of the site. In fact, it sounds like it was partially therapeutic for some to realize that they’re not alone.

I asked permission to share one of the responses with you so you could get some more first hand perspective on the issue of EMR slowness. I share it in the hopes that others can be aware and avoid it. Plus, I hope the EHR vendors that read this will take it to heart and be fanatically focused on EMR speed and customer support.

I’ve removed the name of the writer and the names of the vendors. Plus, realize that it was written originally in an email communication and not necessarily to be published.

OMG…you hit the nail on the head with this post. Our EMR is so slow. It often takes minutes between pages. My clinical and front office staffs so frustrated. We have had nothing but finger pointing going on ever since.

Part of the issue is the interface between our practice management system VENDOR A and our EMR VENDOR B It takes a minimum of 3-4 minutes for data entered into VENDOR A to roll into VENDOR B. My front office staff has taken to entering the data twice, once in each program in order to get our patients registered timely. When you see 80-100 patients in a day, a few minutes makes all the difference.

Additionally, certain criteria does not roll over, namely email addresses. This makes it impossible for us to send out patient visit summaries thus we are unable to meet meaningful use for that criteria. Referring physician is another part that does not roll over.

The most frustrating part is that no one will take any responsibility for the issue much less work on fixing it. These two vendors spend all day playing the blame game. Fortunately for our practice, we have a wonderful IT company that we work with. Our IT specialist has spend countless hours trying to mediate between these two vendors. Most times he just fixes what he can but we are paying for his services in addition to the tech support agreement with VENDOR A and VENDOR B.

A perfect example happened this week when the EMR went down in one of our exam rooms.. First we spend at least 10-20 minutes on hold waiting for a VENDOR B tech to pick up the call. In this particular case, they worked remotely for at least 4 hours on this one computer only to tell us they could not fix it.

I called my IT guy and he fixed it within 10 minutes. My staff spends countless hours on the phone most days trying to keep the system up and running. We are in the process of replacing all our PCs and I recently upgraded our Internet to a 10×10 fiber service however we still are not seeing any difference in speed.

It is at least comforting to know we are not alone. I plan to hang up your post for all my staff to see. It may not make our system work faster but hopefully it will give them some comfort knowing they are not alone.

Thanks for all the great information.

Related posts:

Common EMR Implementation Issue – EHR Performance Issues We’re back again with our ongoing series on Common EMR…
Avoiding EHR Performance Issues in the First Place In my post about the common EHR implementation problem of…
Two Experiences with Failed EHR Implementations A reader recently sent me a couple personal stories about…

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AlxHamiltn

September 4, 2011

EHR shortcuts can backfire

August 31, 2011 | Jeff Rowe, HITECH Watch

It’s no secret that many HIT advocates are frustrated at the pace of the HIT transition.

To be sure, the healthcare sector notoriously lags behind most other major sectors of the economy when it comes to implementing new technology. But sometimes it helps to step back and remember what, from the providers perspective, is actually involved.

This consultant provides just such a view, though it comes largely in the form of a warning that many providers are not using their EHRs properly.

“A disturbing number of practices,” he says, “have failed to analyze the clinical content of their EHR and are distributing exam documents and other information that do not adequately or accurately document patient care. In the more serious situations, EHR clinical documents misrepresent the care provided and the patient’s condition.”

The core issue, it seems, is providers not taking the time to understand the full capabilities of their new EHRs.

He goes on to argue that “these documentation errors and misrepresentations are a direct result of the nature of EHRs and how many practices initiate their use. As a practical matter, many physicians are concerned with the level of effort needed to complete documentation for a patient.”

It’s that concern “with the level of effort” that policymakers probably need to worry about. After all, it’s pretty understandable that providers who already feel under the gun are inclined to take whatever reasonable-seeming shortcuts that come their way.

And those shortcuts, this consultant says, are the problem.

In the end, he lists a number of steps providers should take in order to avoid the pitfalls he warns against at the beginning. But guess what? It takes time to “train and verify”, and time is something many providers feel they already have in much-too-short supply.

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AlxHamiltn

September 8, 2011

Common EHR Implementation Issue – Inadequate EHR Templates – EMR and HIPAA

EMR and HIPAA john@emrandhipaa.com via google.com to admin

Common EHR Implementation Issue – Inadequate EHR Templates – EMR and HIPAA

Common EHR Implementation Issue – Inadequate EHR Templates
Posted: 06 Sep 2011 10:25 AM PDT

Time for the latest entry in my series of Common EHR Implementation Issues. See also my previous posts on Unexpected EHR Expenses, EHR Performance Issues and a little follow up to avoiding the EHR performance issues altogether.

This weeks common EHR implementation issue is: Inadequate EHR Templates.

Before I begin with the major issues of inadequate EHR templates, it’s worth noting that there are a few EHR software out there that use a different EHR documentation paradigm than templates. For example, some use voice recognition to power their documentation. Others have a system that learns your documentation over time and based on that learning remembers how you want to document certain procedures. Others, use lots of independent documentation methods (one EHR vendor calls them controls – check box, radio button, freetext field, etc.) which can be grouped and used in interesting ways.

However, even with all of the above alternative documentation methods, there’s often an element of templating that’s occurring. They’re PR and marketing people will shudder at the term template, but concepts related to templates seem to pretty much always apply. For example, in voice recognition there’s something called a Macro. That’s basically a template. The EHR system that learns your documentation method is just using your initial documentation in the EHR to create personalized templates of how you like to document. The independent documentation methods often group those various “controls” into groups of common visits. That sounds like a template to me.

I’d be interested to hear of an EHR system that doesn’t use the principles of templates. It is worth noting that all EHR templates aren’t created equal. Some are much more flexible than others. Now to some details.

The inadequate EHR templates shows itself in a number of different ways.

No Specialty Specific EHR Templates – This has to be the complaint I hear the most. It usually goes something like this, “The EHR salesperson said they had templates, but they don’t have any templates I can use.” Did someone say EMR salesperson mis-communication? Yep, happens all the time. Let’s be honest for a second. How could the EHR salesperson know how good their cardiology or neurology templates really are? They just go by what they hear and what they’re told by the EHR company.

Incomplete or Unusable EHR Templates – You may have noticed a subtlety in the quote I put above. At the end the doctor says “templates I can use.” Maybe the EHR salesperson isn’t lying to you about them having those cardiology or neurology templates. Maybe they do have a bunch of templates for those specialties (or whatever specialty that interests you). However, just because they have templates for those specialties doesn’t mean that you’re going to want to use any of the templates that they’ve created.

My favorite complaint is when they say that the specialty templates seem to have been created be a general medicine doctor and not an actual specialist from that field. I’ve heard it far too much not to mention it.

The other major problem with this point is the unique documentation preferences of each doctor. Has there ever been any two doctors that document the same way? We could debate the good and bad merits of such documentation, but the point is that each doctor is very different. Some feel the need to over document the encounter. Other doctors want to just document the bare minimum. Plus, some (purposefully or not) do a terrible job documenting the visit. The templates in an EHR could reflect any of these various documentation patterns and depending on your perspective could mean that EHR has inadequate templates for your needs.

Hard to Modify, Add to, or Adjust – While not specifically an inadequate template, this is an important part of templates. Turns out that if a user can easily modify, add to or adjust a template that is inadequate, you’re going to be a lot better off. Some template systems are like pulling teeth to modify. Others are amazing at how you can on the fly modify the template.

One promise I can make you, You WILL want to modify their templates. I can’t say I’ve ever heard of someone using the templates perfectly out of the box. Well, maybe I’ve heard of one or two using them, but that was when they were complaining that they had no way to modify the things they wanted to change.

Avoiding EHR Template Inadequacies

The best way to avoid this issue is to test drive the EHR software and the specialty specific templates you hope to use. Run through the templates like you’re charting on some common patients. You’ll learn a lot about what templates are available doing this than anything else. You’ll see if the templates are overkill or below standard for your needs.

Another great test is to try using multiple templates for a complex patient. How easily is that done and how well does the documentation display?

Then, during your EHR demo with the EHR salesperson, ask them to modify part of the EHR template they’re using to document. Tell them you don’t like to ask one of those questions, so you’d like to see them remove it from the template. Many are likely to respond, “It can be done, but I’d have to switch systems to do it or I’d have to call in to tech support to make the change.” I think we all know the real message they’re sending.

For those not interested in EHR templates, you might take a second to read Dr. West’s Experience implementing EHR templates in his office.

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L. Napoleon Cooper

September 9, 2011

WIRELESS SPEEDS MAY DOUBLE: RICE UNIVERSITY CLAIMS FULL-DUPLEX BREAKTHROUGH

September 8, 2011 — 11:44am ET | By Paul Mah

Researchers from Rice University have successfully demonstrated full-duplex wireless technology that could give wireless traffic a significant speed boost.

Because wireless signals are essentially transmitted in a broadcast medium, incoming and outgoing data streams actually take turns being transmitted over the same channel. This is quite different from how wired technology such as Fast Ethernet, which is full-duplex, able to send and receive data at the same time, works.

In a nutshell, full-duplex wireless, when rolled out, would double wireless network throughput.

The technology demonstrated by Rice entails repurposing MIMO (multiple-input, multiple-output) antenna technology to send two signals in such a way that they cancel each other out, according Computerworld. The concept is not novel, though implementing it using low-cost hardware “took time to figure out.”

As reported by FierceBroadbandWireless, Ashutosh Sabharwal, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice, summed it up this way: “Our solution requires minimal new hardware, both for mobile devices and for networks, which is why we’ve attracted the attention of just about every wireless company in the world.”

While attention is focused on its potential in 4.5G or 5G networks of the future, the technology has implications for Wi-Fi networks too. With 802.11ac Gigabit Wi-Fi forecasted to reach up to 1 billion devices by 2015, a doubling of transmission throughput would be very welcome indeed.

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admin

September 9, 2011

This breakthrough has great significance for global health information database in the cloud and for the dedicated web-based hardware upon which it will exist for end-user caregiver electronic medical records and patient’s, personal health records. As, apparently, the future is yesterday.

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AlxHamiltn

September 9, 2011

Rice demonstrates full-duplex wireless technology

New approach could double wireless capabilities when 5G networks arrive

By Matt Hamblen
September 6, 2011 04:41 PM ET4 Comments

Computerworld – Rice University researchers today announced they have successfully demonstrated full-duplex wireless technology that would allow a doubling of network traffic without the need for more cell towers.

Ahutosh Sabharwal, a Rice professor of electrical and computer engineering, said the innovative full-duplex technology requires a minimal amount of new hardware for both mobile devices and networks.

However, he added that full-duplex technology does require new wireless standards, meaning it might not be available for several years as carriers move to 5G, or Fifth Generation, networks, he added.

Today, the largest national carriers in the U.S., AT&T and Verizon Wireless, are in the early stages of rolling 4G networks on LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology, while Sprint has a more fully developed 4G network running over WiMax.

Full-duplex technology would allow a cell phone or other wireless device to transmit data and receive data on the same frequency; today’s networks require separate frequencies to send and receive.

In effect, therefore, full-duplex technology could double a network’s capacity.

Rice reported that its innovation has attracted interest from wireless companies globally, noting that carriers are universally concerned about having enough spectrum to support the continuing explosion of wireless devices and their increasingly complex applications, such as video.

One of AT&T’s arguments in wanting to purchase T-Mobile USA for $39 billion is to gain access to more wireless spectrum.

Asked on Tuesday to comment on the full-duplex technology demonstrated at Rice, an AT&T spokesman said the carrier would need to study the innovation before commenting on it.

Sabharwal and his colleagues, Melissa Duarte and Chris Dick, first wrote in 2010 that full-duplex was possible, and this summer Sabharwal and other colleagues showed a full-duplex signal with 10 times better reliability and throughput than any other touted by researchers, Rice officials said.

Sabharwal said Rice has also been able to show it can add full-duplex as an additional mode to existing hardware, such as smartphones, where space is limited. That means that a smartphone maker would not need to add new hardware to support full-duplex.

Rice’s new technology was able to repurpose MIMO (Multiple Input, Multiple Output) antenna technology, which is already fairly widely used.

MIMO uses multiple antennas and the Rice team was able to send two signals in a way that they cancel each other out, allowing a clear signal to go through over the single frequency.

Cancellation of signals had been proposed in theory for full duplex networks a while ago, Sabharwal said, but it took time to figure out a way to implement the idea at low cost without sophisticated new hardware.

In addition to full-duplex technology, Rice has created a Wireless Open-Access Research Platform (WARP) with open source software that provides a space for researches from other organizations to innovate freely and examine full-duplex innovations.

Also, Sabharwal’s team has demonstrated it can provide full-duplex in asynchronous mode, which means that one wireless node can start receiving a signal at the same time it is transmitting, instead of waiting to finish the transmission.

Sabharwal and colleagues have also published their theory on how full-duplex wireless networks work. The authors say the document can be used by engineers interested in adopting the technology.

Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at @matthamblen, or subscribe to Matt’s RSS feed . His e-mail address is mhamblen@computerworld.com.

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BP

September 26, 2011

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AlxHamiltn

October 22, 2011

News: Google readies Google+ for push into the enterprise

Vic Gundotra says integration imminent but analysts say a lot of work to be done

By Sharon Gaudin

October 21, 2011 03:48 PM ET8 Comments
Computerworld – Google looks close to unleashing Google+ on the enterprise.

Earlier this month, CEO Larry Page said he wants Google+ to “transform” the company, while another Google exec said this week that part of that transformation is imminent.

Speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit this week in San Francisco, Vic Gundotra, a Google engineering senior vice president, noted that Google+, the company’s new social network, soon will be integrated with Google Apps, the company’s cloud-based office suite. The company on Thursday accidentally leaked information on the update to Gmail, which is a key feature of Google Apps.

All signs point to big changes coming not only for Google+ but for Google Apps. A Google spokeswoman on Friday would only say that the company is “working fast and furiously” to bring features in Google+ to Google Apps. She declined to say when the integration would take place.

“If I were a betting man, I’d bet that the enterprise is their target,” said Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group. “I think that they’ve positioned Google+ as more enterprisey than Facebook. With Google+’s ability to be more selective about setting up different circles, corporate users could set up circles for different customers, colleagues or business associates.”

He added that while Google is focused on social networking, the company also has set its sights squarely on the enterprise. By combining Google+ and Google Apps, the company could pull its two focuses together.

“Google sees socialization and collaboration as the obvious way to gain even more market share and mind share in their lines of business,” Olds said. “It’s all interrelated with them, I think. Their apps will all tie in together with the collaboration people can do with Google+, and it all ties to search.”

Olds and other industry analysts said they would expect to see some enterprise-related updates made to Google+ to get it ready for corporate use. For instance, collaboration tools designed to make it easy to share work projects like spreadsheets, documents and pictures would be basic additions.

Brad Shimmin, an analyst with Current Analysis, also noted that the many applications within Google Apps, such as Gmail, Calendar and Docs, will have to be socially enabled to make the integration work.

“Aside from that, Google will need to apply all of its security, privacy and governance to the task of managing Google+ data,” he said, adding that he’s not at all surprised to hear Google is working to quickly push Google+ toward enterprise users.

“For Google to prosper within the enterprise marketplace, it must make Google+ a part of its Google Apps for Business portfolio,” said Shimmin. “It is a natural evolution for the product that follows a well-worn path trod by so many Google products such as Gmail and Docs.”

With so much to do to get Google+ ready for the enterprise, Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group, said he’s not surprised that Google is working on a quick integration. But he will be surprised if the company does it well.

“Certainly it’s part of a strategy to tie them all together and an important part of [Google’s] future,” Enderle said. “But I think they should be spending more time assuring the success, security and quality of their products before they focus on… connecting them.”

Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at @sgaudin or subscribe to Sharon’s RSS feed . Her e-mail address is sgaudin@computerworld.com.

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1. admin
  
  October 22, 2011
  
  Google readies Google+ for push into the enterprise?
  
  We (USASinglePayerOption.com) see a would-be integrated combination of Google+; Google Apps; and Google’s Search technologies as an idea infrastructure for our planned “Not-for-profit Health Service” database for modeling global health in the Cloud, and for allowing caregivers and related healthcare delivery, supply and educational enterprises, uniform access to related requirements and commercial opportunities, on a social networking platform capable of affording global healthcare consumers one-click; unrestricted; and secure access to standardized medical; finance; public goods; and individualized e-commerce referral information on dedicated but inexpensive hardware, including smart phones, tablets and other devices.
  
  CEO
  
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admin

November 11, 2011

EMR and HIPAA john@emrandhipaa.com via google.com to me

The iPad Opportunity – A Decent EMR Interface

Posted: 04 Nov 2011 09:52 AM PDT

Yesterday, I created a post on EMR & EHR called The Must Have EMR Feature – An iPad Interface. that post has driven quite a bit of discussion on Twitter and Google Plus. One comment from @2charlie hit me the most though:

Charlie Gaddy, A decent web interface wouldn’t hurt either. RT @ehrandhit: The Must Have EMR Feature – An iPad Interface dlvr.it/tYkN7

Charlie’s twitter response highlights a number of interesting ideas. The first point that every SaaS EHR company will point out is that he said a web interface. We could go into the semantics of what is “the web”, but I have little doubt that Charlie meant a browser based interface when he said web. I’ll leave the rest of the discussion of “web” EMR interfaces for another post (plus, we’ve had that discussion many times on this site).

Instead, I want to focus on his use of the word “decent.” That adjective is interesting because no one would really argue that there aren’t plenty of web EMR interfaces out there. If you look at the EHR Scope EMR Comparison site, you’ll see a huge number of web based EMR companies listed. However, when you add the word “decent” to web EMR interface, I think we could have some really interesting discussion.

At least a couple times a week I get a doctor sending me an email or posting a comment on my website saying that “all of the EMR interfaces are terrible.” I don’t necessarily agree that “all” EMR interfaces are terrible, but a lot of them do fit the description quite well. I’m sure at this point all the EMR companies are thinking about their competitors and agreeing with me.

The iPad Opportunity for EMR Interfaces

As I thought on Charlie’s comment of a “decent web interface” as compared with an iPad EMR interface, I realized that the iPad provides a unique opportunity for EMR vendors with less than stellar web interfaces. While it would be great for EMR vendors to create stellar web interfaces or improve their current web interfaces, that’s much easier said than done. Many are working on older technologies. Others have so much company culture built into their interface that it’s hard to change. Many have large user bases that will freak out at the idea of a new web interface. Etc etc etc! The point being that the culture and history of many EMR interfaces make it hard to change.

In these cases, I see the iPad as a great opportunity to start fresh with your EMR interface. Many EHR vendors could use the iPad as a way to be able to create a new interface for their EMR with all the knowledge they’ve learned over the years baked in. Doctors expect the iPad interface to be different and unique.

I’ll be interested to see which EMR companies take this opportunity and make something of it. It’s the perfect chance for EMR companies to create a paradigm shift in their EMR software without having to admit publicly the mistakes they made in their first EMR interface. Unless you happen to be from an EHR company who built the perfect EMR interface from the start. Then, this need not apply.

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