Health IT and AI in Medicine

Converting paper charts to electronic medical records tips

Health Technology

September 24, 2010

We are a little over two years into our electronic medical records implementation at the time of this writing. Since we have been performing a gradual rollout, the entire process has been relatively uneventful. Most of the credit for this goes to our chief information officer (technospeak for the head of our IT department) and our practice administrator.

One of the biggest challenges we have been facing is how to convert …

Apple’s iPad on medical rounds, a hands on physician review

Kevin

Health Technology

August 13, 2010

by Felasfa Wodajo, MD

Recently, we had the chance to check in with Dr. Henry Feldman. He had posted a detailed summary of his experiences using the iPad as his main interface while rotating on service for a week as a hospitalist at Beth Israel Deaconess hospital (BIDMC) in Boston. Dr. Feldman is also Chief Information Architect for the Harvard Medical Faculty Physicians.

The summary of the …

How to implement CPOE successfully at your hospital

John Halamka, MD

Health Technology

July 9, 2010

One in every 10 patients admitted to six Massachusetts community hospitals suffered serious and avoidable medication mistakes. This has created a new urgency for all hospitals in the state to install computerized physician order entry (CPOE).

At BIDMC, we implemented CPOE in 2001 and have not had a handwritten order in most areas, except for the 2 days of our network outage in 2002. Implementing CPOE is challenging and requires …

Problem list problems with electronic medical records

Hans Duvefelt, MD

Health Technology

May 4, 2010

In family medicine it has been common to keep a “Problem List” in patients’ paper charts. Usually placed on the left hand side, on top of the Medication List, it has given doctors like me an instant thumbnail sketch before considering the specifics of each patient’s visit for that day.

A typical Problem List would include diagnoses like diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol or rheumatoid arthritis. It would list prior surgeries, like …

Free iPhone medical apps that every doctor can use

Satish Misra, MD and Iltifat Husain, MD

Health Technology

March 3, 2010

by Iltifat Husain, Yousif Alkadhi, MD, and Satish Misra

If you’re a physician, medical student, or in any other health care related field, trying to find the best free medical apps for the iPhone is a hassle.

Apps such as “Dream Meanings”, “Relax Ocean waves”, and “Stool Scanner Lite” dominate the Top Free Medical Apps list in the App Store. Our top 10 iPhone medical apps list contains no such app, …

10 ways an Apple iPad can help doctors improve patient care

Joseph Kim, MD, MPH

Health Technology

February 2, 2010

The current (first generation) Apple iPad probably won’t run a robust electronic health record (EHR).

However, it may run some iPhone/iPod touch EHR/EMR apps. I think most physicians will prefer to use a standard tablet PC instead of the iPad. However, given that a large percentage of physicians are not using the tablet in the outpatient office setting, perhaps …

Why there needs to be a national healthcare information database

Edward Pullen, MD

Health Technology

January 24, 2010

The majority of Americans have a great deal of personal health information in their physician’s medical record. Many of these physicians have an electronic healthcare record (EHR) to store this information.

Unless you are in an integrated healthcare system, and most Americans are not, this information is just not available to you or any physician seeing you who does not belong to the same physician group as your primary physician. Even …

The physical exam is useless

Kevin

Uncategorized

February 8, 2006

I have written before that the physical exam is useless in American medicine:

This is why the physical exam is useless in American medicine – it cannot hold up in court. Clinical evaluation and judgment skills now needs to be supported with objective, and often expensive, tests. Here we have a case of three separate physicians who, in their clinical opinion, did not feel a CT scan was warranted. …

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The physical exam is useless