The future of Health Records
Good coverage by CNET.com on Your e-health future. It touches upon some of the rationales for moving Medical Records to Electronic formats – but also alludes to the major barriers, including cost, complexity, privacy, and security (and less obvious ones, such as the legal use of digital health records by insurance companies to deny membership or hike prices beyond affordability for those with existing medical conditions), while talking about the trends and regulations that affect this trend.
Interesting reading that I’ll let you discover by yourself, but in my opinion one of the main point is the mention that the advantages of electronic medical records come only if older paper records are scanned or incorporated into the new system.
This is a laborious, expensive and error-prone process, which requires technologies like Automatic Classification, Intelligent Extraction, and other advanced technologies that can extract information from this unstructured set of information. And, scanning this huge backlog of information should not be improvised - can I scan all of those records at once? Or should I scan a patient record only in preparation of an appointment, on-demand? What about all this paper trail that we’ll continue generating until Medical Records become fully electronic? Should I use decentralized scanning, bulk scanning, or a mix of both? TYhis can of strategy is best defined with an expert in document management, who can put you on the path to the Less Paper medical office.
I believe certain medical organizations like the VA are fully electronic. The strategy they used : decentralized scanning, bulk scanning, or a mix of both ? can provide some pointers on how other organizations may choose to proceed.
I had read quite a lot about Kaiser as being a role model going fully electronic. Pointers would be great!
It may appear strange but it seems that a government agency – the VA (Veterans Administration) is a leader in being fully electronic. They may end up being the prototype other organizations/agencies follow.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/06/AR2007040601911.html
It would be fascinating to know how Kaiser is accomplishing this, as well as how the VA “built” an electronic database from the older paper files. Any word on it?
Lwild,
Interesting question. I am sure their might be White paper/case study about it.
Here’s a link to the demo system from the internet :
http://www1.va.gov/cprsdemo/
and an artcle about it :
http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2009/06/08/bisa0608.htm
Does anyone have any thoughts about the possible effects of Google’s on line health records? Or any of the competition that seems to be growing in this space.
Just one example;
http://www.healthrecordsonline.com/