Robert X. Cringley – author, former InfoWorld columnist and tech guru – has an excellent post about medical data up on his blog. He covers the opportunities and concerns surrounding the future of electronic health records. I recommend reading the whole thing, but here’s a quick excerpt:
There are lots of advantages to computerizing health records. A couple of years ago I visited the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, to discuss this very issue. Mayo has been in the forefront of digitizing all of its six million patient records. This is a bigger job than most of us realize since it involves not just blood tests and doctor’s notes but also X-Rays and CAT scans.
Mayo, which was a century ago the first clinic in America to standardize the way it kept records in the first place, is also at the forefront in creative ways to use those records once they are in the system. You see Mayo doesn’t have six million patients, they have six million patient records — many of those being records of people long dead. But keeping extensive records of dead people creates a powerful database for statistical testing of possible treatments and even drug interactions. “Surely in those six million records there is something similar to this medical mystery we are trying to solve today.” And often there is.
Figuring out from an analysis of records that combining drugs A, B, and G sometimes kills people can be good to know.
Mayo is taking the process even further to include DNA data for many patients with the goal of being able to statistically identify genetic trends within the population through records analysis.
Click here to read the full text of Cringley’s post. His commentary has already sparked another interesting post from an anthropologist, John Hawks on the specific genetic data aspects of electronic health records. Hawks mentions Practice Fusion’s recent case study in Chris Anderson’s book.
What do you think of Cringley’s take on EHR? Share your comments below.
