Buried Under Stacks

If Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are being adopted at a record pace, then why are hospitals slow to abandon physical paperwork? Anoto, a digitizer of of healthcare processes, claims that paper is the preferred medium for healthcare professionals and 'will be for the foreseeable future.'

Why? What is driving this resistance to digital records? Respondents to a survey claim that this is all a part of the burden of the new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). Employees responded that 75% of their time is spent working on or processing paperwork. While that is a tremendous statistic, I don't think it tells the whole story.

Employees are required to do this paperwork, so the resistance isn't against the digital medium itself. The resistance is against doing work twice. You read it yourself, employees spend 75% percent of their time working with physical copies, so when would they be able to input this data into the computer? If they were able to input digital files the first time, there would not be such a problem.

Now, the issue lies with how this data can be inputted digitally the first time. For those who work in an office with constant access to a computer, this is a non-issue. But, those who work directly with patients cannot jog back and forth between the patient and a computer. There are a couple of ways to tackle this problem.

Workstations on wheels (WOWs) are exactly what they sound like. These desktop computers are powered by batteries and are portable. Employees can drag WOWs around with them to patients and input data directly. The downsides are that these workstations are bulky and distracting. Employees may find it difficult to work on such a machine while they communicate with patients. This leads me to...

Tablets. If employees carried around tablets or smartphones that were synced with the hospital records, the problems associated with WOWs would vanish. These devices are smaller and thus less distracting. Data would be uploaded instantly to the EHR, drastically reducing time spent on paper work.

Of course, until a study backs up my suggestions, they are only theoretical.


Source: Healthcare Still Buried In Paperwork

Rising Demand for Healthcare Apps

At lunch the other day, I noticed my cousin futzing around with her iPhone and a prescription for medication. "What are you doing?" I ask. "I'm refilling a prescription," she replies. 

From her phone, she takes a photo of the script, which is uploaded to an app, and sent to the nearest CVS Pharmacy. She gets confirmation that the refill will be ready in an hour, right when we get out of lunch. 

This prescription app is a primitive step compared to the healthcare technology of the future.  As patients start to use these apps more often, they will begin to demand more services with this form factor. Scheduling appointments, paying doctors, ordering medication - all will be done through apps.  

Hospitals must have EHRs and infrastructure in place to meet the future demand for these portable apps. In areas were patients have a choice of quality healthcare providers, they will choose the most technically advanced. These create customer expectations that savvy healthcare management will meet.

Consumers have become increasingly dependent on mobile device over the last five years (disclosure: I'm writing this blog on an iPad). We [consumers] expect apps for most things in our lives now - healthcare will be no different.  

Healthcare in the Cloud

I’ve talked about Electronic Health Records (EHRs) in the past, but those posts were geared towards the hospital's benefit. In fact, you might be wondering: “How can EHRs benefit patients?” Funny that you ask, because I was just going to write a blog post on that very subject. 

Have you ever forgot to request a prescription refill? Waited anxiously for a child’s lab results? Made a long trip to the doctor’s just to have a form filled out? You can understand how bothersome these situations are, yet patients face these kinds of problems each day. Until now, there has been no easy solution. But, with the emergence of cheap cloud storage and the rise of high-speed internet, healthcare organizations may finally be able to offer a technological fix.

Imagine that you are a patient: wouldn’t you love to have total control and easy access to all of your health records? (Bear with me here.) You would be able to track all of your children's doctor appointments, order a new prescription, check lab results, and send health information to those who require it - all with the touch of a button. Electronic Health Records, with complementary apps, make those previously mentioned features possible.

Benefits for patients are clear: convenience and simplicity. With the technology currently available, there is no excuse for shuffling loose, paper files around a desktop. Cloud computing can sync patient records across numerous systems, making matters simpler for both hospitals and patients. Annoyances of the past, wiped away with the swipe of a finger. 

Original Articles:

• Healthcare Cloud definitions should be based on NIST’s definitions
• Advanced EMRs reap advanced benefits