Health Technology

Physicians writing on KevinMD about the technology in the exam room: the electronic record and what it did to the visit, meaningful use, alert fatigue, pajama time, human and AI scribes and whether they give time back, ambient documentation, telemedicine, and what AI can do in clinical practice now and who is responsible when it is wrong. Two maintained records draw on this archive: The electronic health record: what physicians say, in their own words and Artificial intelligence: what physicians say, in their own words.

7 iPhone apps that need to be created for doctors

David Sack, MD

Health Technology

August 17, 2012

I read a few months ago that the number of available iPhone apps had exceeded a million, with new apps now appearing that are intended to help sort through the mountain of other apps. We have reached the age of meta-apps. Parenthetically, I have always loved that “meta”concept. In college, when people asked why I majored in philosophy despite the fact that I was pre-med, I explained that my intention was to become …

Computers in the exam room: Good and bad setups

WarmSocks

Health Technology

August 10, 2012

Does your doctor use a computer in the exam room? Some people think that computers are a great way to keep track of patient information. Others see some advantage, but problems in the implementation. There are also a few Luddites who oppose this change simply on principle. I’ve had good experiences, and bad experiences, and believe we have a long way to go before computers are as helpful as they could be.

There …

My dream of universal acceptance of EHR has turned sour

Rob Lamberts, MD

Health Technology

August 2, 2012

This past July marked the 16th anniversary of the installation of our electronic medical record.

Yup. I am that weird.

Over the first 10-14 years of my run as doctor uber-nerd, I believed that widespread adoption of EHR would be one of main things to drive efficiency in health care. I told anyone I could corner about our drive to improve the quality of our care, while keeping our cash-flow out of …

Why health and medical apps should be certified

David Lee Scher, MD

Health Technology

July 28, 2012

A draft of standards for a health and medical app certification program was released recently by Happtique. As a matter of disclosure I am proud to have been the Chair of the panel that drafted these standards. The standards are in draft form and are open to public comment until August 17, 2012.

While some might say that these standards add even more barriers to the commercial adoption of these technologies, there are …

I love my new EMR, but my staff hates it

Lucy Hornstein, MD

Health Technology

July 24, 2012

I love my new EMR, which I’ve been using for about 18 months now. I love having all my patients’ information at my fingertips in and out of the office. I don’t miss the piles of paper charts all over the place at all! In short, there’s really nothing about it I don’t like.

My staff, on the other hand, hates it.

Now that they’re not jumping up and down all the …

Medical device connectivity in hospitals: One size does not fit all

Michelle Grate, RN, CPHIMS

Health Technology

July 22, 2012

As a project manager working with hospitals on a daily basis, it can sometimes feel like I’m on an episode of “MythBusters.” Consistently, I work with hospital executives, nurses, clinicians and IT staff that have been told “one-size-fits-all” when it comes to various technology implementations. And, in my experience, it typically doesn’t take long before the truth is exposed.

For hospitals entertaining a technology implementation like medical device connectivity, there is …

5 reasons that prevent doctors from using mobile apps

David Lee Scher, MD

Health Technology

July 15, 2012

The Jackson Coker Special Report on Apps, Doctors, and Digital Devices, originally published in October 2011, was featured in a recent online article with the headline “80% of Doctors Use Smartphones and Medical Apps in Everyday Medical Practice.”

If one delves a bit more into the facts, the 80% quoted in the Jackson and Coker report is derived from yet another study by Aptilon reported in April, 2011 by mobihealthnews stating that …

What’s needed for an EHR to transform primary care

Kenneth Lin, MD

Health Technology

July 10, 2012

The family medicine residency program where I serve as a faculty preceptor “went live” with their new electronic health record. They posted a sign at the front desk that read in part: “Pardon Our Progress,” as if we were starting a major construction project — which in a way, we were.

Instead of wading through stacks of unruly paper charts, my colleagues and I logged on to a sleek online portal …

You have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable to disrupt health

Chris Gibbons, MD, MPH

Health Technology

July 2, 2012

Fitness maven Jeanette Jenkins recently tweeted that “to see big results you have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.”

In other words, making change happen, inevitably leads to emotional or physical discomfort. If you are serious about change you must be willing to endure a lot of discomfort. While this is no doubt true, I would take things one or maybe two steps further and say, “Disruptive change will only happen …

How copy and paste in electronic medical records affects patient care

Elizabeth Hipp

Health Technology

July 1, 2012

With many hospitals and medical providers still in the early adoption stages of EHR, objections or problems with the various systems are still just coming to light. However, one particularly growing concern is providers using the copy-paste or copy-forward function in patient records. This is a shortcut that many physicians have found to be handy after the implementation of the new system, however using it actually can violate patient confidentiality …

Could mobile apps replace doctors?

David Lee Scher, MD

Health Technology

June 21, 2012

A recent post in the DailyDealMedia caught my attention. It was titled “Uprising in Mobile Health Care: Could Medical Apps Replace Doctors?”

The theme of technology versus humanistic aspects of medicine has been the subject of debate for many decades, obviously predating the advent of medical apps. I find it interesting that the introduction of the referenced PwC study highlights the fact that “Solutions, not technology, are the key to success.”

Another piece on this subject …

Read more…

Could mobile apps replace doctors?

Should you consider an EHR in the cloud?

Rosemarie Nelson

Health Technology

June 9, 2012

Which electronic health record system should I select?

Among physicians and managers in small-group practices today, there is no more common question.

But lately, another vexing question has emerged: Whether to install EHR software on servers in your office, or subscribe to an Internet-based system maintained in “the cloud.”

What Is “the cloud”?

When EHR vendors began offering their products via the cloud, many physicians were puzzled. Some think that the cloud is simply …

We must get past the complaints doctors have about EMRs

Deepak Ramesh

Health Technology

June 1, 2012

Any new technology necessarily has a phase in which unnoticed bugs as well as unforeseen challenges crop up. In its early stages, the snail’s pace of a dial-up connection often made using the Internet onerous: before completing an email, one was often interrupted by pop-ups, viruses, cryptic 404 error messages, and a cacophony of sounds from the modem as the line repeatedly disconnected. Yet, as technology matures, the ability to …

Young physicians will become the champions of technology

David Lee Scher, MD

Health Technology

May 30, 2012

“Generation C” has recently been defined by Nielsen as adults between 18 and 34 years old, who are entrenched in digital technologies.

They are indeed the connected generation and use technology by choice in all facets of life. It is part of their fabric. Those entering the field of medicine would logically desire and expect to carry that over to their professional lives. However, there are multiple barriers to the continuity …

Mobile health apps don’t always follow conventional wisdom

Richard Meyer

Health Technology

May 22, 2012

Propaganda and non-truths abound all around the Internet saying that mobile health apps are everything from a threat to Big Pharma to a way to save billions of dollars in healthcare costs. There may be a future for mobile apps but a lot of work is yet to be done.

Last year I led some market research into mobile apps across all demographic segments and several disease conditions. While we did …

When patient care becomes secondary to filling out the medical record

Jordan Grumet, MD

Health Technology

May 22, 2012

The policeman was two cars in front of me. I meandered down the road cautiously adjusting my speed a few ticks above the limit. I lamented the forced, measured pace as the road lazily formed a long straight path. The clock refused to slow for my new found law abiding citizenry.

A sports car motored around a curve and flew past us unaware. The cop switched on his lights and tried …

The user interface for EHRs should be uniform

Roheet Kakaday

Health Technology

May 18, 2012

The first thing I noticed when I walked into the physician’s office were the tall cabinets filled with manila folders, tabbed with names and organized alphabetically. There were three of these cabinets, taking up the entire length of the back wall, filled with hundreds upon hundreds of patients’ records.

“I see you still have paper records. Do you plan on implementing an EHR anytime soon?” I inquired.

The doctor paused for a …

EMR liability needs to go further than just the physician

Scot Silverstein, MD

Health Technology

May 16, 2012

This example of a disaster waiting to happen, in the form of an error-promoting CPOE, is a poster example of why the net of litigation needs to be cast far wider than just clinicians when EHR-related errors result in injury or death.

This order entry screen, from a production system shows the following. In all fairness, I do note it’s unclear if the vendor or the customer’s configuration “experts” were responsible …

AMA: Changes are needed in the stage 2 meaningful use EHR proposal

Peter W. Carmel, MD

Health Technology

May 15, 2012

A guest column by the American Medical Association, exclusive to KevinMD.com.

Continuing our efforts to move medicine forward while prioritizing patient care and minimizing administrative and financial burdens for physician practices, the American Medical Association (AMA) along with 100 state and specialty medical societies submitted a detailed comment letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). We urged CMS to …

EMRs require better user-centered design

Barbara J. Moore, MD

Health Technology

May 14, 2012

Healthcare IT News recently asked, “Do doctors have to be typists to get MU incentives?”

That question reminded me that given the many hours of unreimbursed labor performing EMR data entry at end of day, a significant chunk of a clinician’s workday is spent performing medical secretary services. Let me set the record straight, I am a good typist. But EMR data entry interfaces are often unnecessarily cumbersome, so clinicians put …

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