Health IT and AI in Medicine

Physicians writing on KevinMD about the electronic record and artificial intelligence: what the record did to the visit and who it was built for, alert fatigue and pajama time, human and AI scribes and the minutes they actually save, ambient documentation and its audit risk, and what AI can do in clinical practice now, whether it will replace physicians, 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.

Why your website is important to recruit physicians

Bo Claypool

Physician

November 3, 2011

Just as posited in a prior article featured on KevinMD.com, where it was suggested that implementing an EMR/EHR has significant attraction to prospective physician candidates, I would like to also recommend that a similar stance can be adopted with respect your practice’s your web presence.

In other words, is your website putting your best foot forward for not only prospective patients, but also to prospective physicians and others who …

3 reasons why doctors will miss Steve Jobs

Iltifat Husain, MD

Health Technology

November 1, 2011

Doctors love their Apple Products. Just walk into any hospital ward, and see the types of mobile devices we are using. At weekly Grand Rounds conferences, you see plenty of iPads in use. At physician meetings, the laptop of choice is often the Macbook Pro. The data backs these anecdotal examples as well.

Doctors love their Apple Products – and Steve Jobs was obviously an extension of these …

Patients and physicians in the digital age

Kent Bottles, MD

Patient

November 1, 2011

The digital age has had a deep and likely permanent effect on the patient-physician relationship. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had physicians beg me to provide them with a way to stop their patients from Googling their symptoms and diagnosing themselves before their first office visit and much to their chagrin, my answer is always the same, “You can’t stop them. Get over it.”

The Internet acts …

How a medical student uses an iPad for patient care and education

Alex Chamessian

Health Technology

October 23, 2011

iPads have been introduced into medical education mostly during the pre-clinical years. I’d like to share my experience using an iPad during my clinical year. I’ve found it to be exceedingly useful and versatile.

I have an entire medical library in my pocket. With the touch of a button I can pull up essential texts such as Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine or William’s Endocrinology. I get these books and …

How Steve Jobs mentored a physician and changed health care

Davis Liu, MD

Health Technology

October 6, 2011

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I’ve been reading A Game Plan for Life: The Power of Mentoring written by famed UCLA basketball coach John Wooden. Wooden spends half of his book thanking the people who had a powerful influence on his life, coaching, philosophy, and outlook on life. Important people included his father, coaches, President Abraham Lincoln, and Mother Theresa.

Yes, President Abraham Lincoln and Mother Theresa.

Though …

Protecting health apps on the web from the evils of the Internet

John Halamka, MD

Health Technology

October 3, 2011

The Internet can be a swamp of hackers, crackers, and hucksters attacking your systems for fun, profit and fraud. Defending your data and applications against this onslaught is a cold war, requiring constant escalation of new techniques against an ever increasing offense.

Clinicians are mobile people. They work in ambulatory offices, hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, on the road, and at home. They have desktops, laptops, tablets, iPhones and iPads. Ideally …

Sometimes cyber-medicine is fraught with danger

Stewart Segal, MD

Patient

October 2, 2011

I’m worried about the future. Everyone I know is stressed. Patients fail to follow up as directed. They fail to take their medications as directed. They have too much to do. Their priority lists are in shambles.

With all the responsibilities that today’s multitasking society thrust on my patients, they don’t even have the time to pick up the phone and call each other; instead, they text, IM, SMS, and email. …

Few doctors will meet meaningful use in 2011, and that’s ok

Brian Klepper, PhD and David C. Kibbe, MD, MBA

Health Technology

September 26, 2011

2011 will be a disappointing year for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Office of the National Coordinator’s electronic health record incentive programs. We predict that few doctors and hospitals will meet the objectives set for the “meaningful use” of certified EHR technology. Meaningful use is, of course, the term that describes the objectives and measures providers and hospitals must meet in order to receive financial bonuses …

Mobile technology will be omnipresent in health care

Douglas Elwood, MD, MBA

Health Technology

September 23, 2011

A white paper from The Beryl Institute reveals a 10% increase in general patient satisfaction and over 40% improvement in satisfaction with educational materials at hospitals when interactive technology is provided.

The publication examines six different hospital systems using the industry-standard Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey for evaluation. According to a press release on the study, the technology gave patients faster access to hospital staff and services by submitting …

Legal weaknesses of an electronic medical record

Mike Koriwchak, MD

Health Technology

September 23, 2011

Over the past several months I have read several online discussions and comment threads on the medical-legal issues raised by EMR, including an HIMSS brochure on the subject. Most of these discussions miss what I consider to be the most important legal weaknesses of an electronic medical record. I finally came across an online discussion that comes closer to covering what I consider to be the most …

Doctors are the true consumers of health care dollars

Ian Metzler

Physician

September 21, 2011

With computerized health systems, physicians can place orders as easily as they can shop online at Amazon.com. Just a few clicks and your physician can purchase a panel of blood tests, futuristic imaging and diagnostic procedures that will hopefully guide their path to solving your ailments.

Search. Click. Submit. Repeat.

Except, unlike online shopping, physicians don’t see the price tags and they never get the bill. Doctors are the true consumers …

Social gaming to engage patients and improve wellness

Travis Good, MD, MBA

Health Technology

September 14, 2011

Social connectivity to engage patients has real the potential to impact health through improvements in lifestyle, the main driver of wellness. This is in increasingly shorter supply as we collectively increase pounds, cholesterol, and blood pressure readings.

Many have written compellingly on why social matters for health. The best I’ve seen are a post by Jay Parkinson (of Hello Health and Fast Company fame) that borrows from Atul …

My iPad and my hip fracture

Paul Hsieh, MD

Health Technology

September 12, 2011

Dear Apple:

I’ve been a happy iPad2 owner since March 2011, but I never fully appreciated its value until I recently broke my hip in a bad fall and required subsequent hospitalization.

I am a physician, so I had already been using my iPad for my work, reading PDFs of medical articles, communicating with my colleagues via e-mail, etc. But when I broke my hip in an accident a few days ago, …

Read more…

My iPad and my hip fracture

How an EHR will impact physician productivity

Robert Rowley, MD

Health Technology

September 10, 2011

One of the big concerns about implementing an electronic health record (EHR) into a medical practice is the fear that it will slow you down. In fact, after cost, usability (and its effect on productivity) is the second-biggest perceived barrier to EHR adoption.

Numerous studies have shown that EHR implementation actually ends up saving cost in a group practice, mainly because of reducing or eliminating the need for paper-based medical …

The threat of technology to proper patient care

Josh Herigon, MPH

Health Technology

September 9, 2011

Dr. Abraham Verghese wrote in the New York Times recently about the threat of technology to proper patient care. This is an excellent piece and although I do not disagree with the overall message, I think Dr. Verghese conflates different issues currently plaguing our health care system.

Below, I provide some comments on a few of the major points Dr. Verghese writes about: “This computer record creates what I call an “iPatient” …

Telemedicine to augment the patient encounter

John Schumann, MD

Health Technology

September 8, 2011

When I use the term “telemedicine,” what does it mean to you?

In current parlance, it usually refers to radiologists looking at digital images of x-rays and other scans from locations remote from the site of acquisition. Think “outsourcing” where the radiologist could even be as far away as India.

But according to a recent conference I attended, telemedicine could mean so much more. It can range from synchronous video chat …

Tips for doctors looking for the right EHR

Margalit Gur-Arie

Health Technology

September 3, 2011

Here we are going to talk about the second stage of shopping for an EHR. We are going to assume that you did your homework, defined your goals and constraints and prepared a comprehensive list of requirements for an EHR (if you have not done so already, go back and read part 1).

To continue our car shopping analogy, we are now ready to go kick some tires, and …

Natural language processing in electronic health records

Joe Petro

Health Technology

September 1, 2011

80 percent of the clinical documentation that exists in healthcare today is unstructured. It is sometimes referred to as “the text blob” and is buried within electronic health records (EHRs). The inherent problem with “the text blob” is that locked within it lies an extraordinary amount of key clinical data – valuable information that can and should be leveraged to make more informed clinical decisions, to ultimately improve patient …

How government can improve EMR usability

Jonathan Baran

Health Technology

August 31, 2011

Government involvement in usability has been the talk recently. In case your not aware, EMR usability is such as problem the government is exploring ways to get involved. As you might imagine the topic is a very sticky subject, especially EMR vendors, as the topic conjures images of committee-centered design and EMRs being worse of then they already are now.

However, when you think objectively about it, I believe the government …

Properly delete electronic medical records, or face fines

Pamela Wible, MD

Health Technology

August 30, 2011

Could a complete stranger receive your echocardiogram results in the mail?

Could a homeless guy in Boston end up with your labs in his shopping cart?

Is it possible that your medical records were sold on eBay?

Yes. Yes. And yes.

On February 24, 2011, Massachusetts General Hospital was fined $1 million dollars by the federal government when an employee inadvertently left a stack of papers on the subway. These documents contained the …

Health IT and AI in Medicine

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