by
Gus Iversen, Editor in Chief | March 01, 2019
From the January/February 2019 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
HCB News: Can you tell us about the progress you're making with reimagining EHRs?
DA: Well, we’ve done a lot better at reimagining EHRs than turning those dreams into reality. This is hard work. But current EHRs are not the products of imagination. They are the products of taking what we already had and digitizing it. The EHR knows to flag a certain hemoglobin level as abnormal, but not to compare it against historic values for that patient, check the mean corpuscular volume, reticulocyte count, and offer suggested next steps. Nor can the EHR automate. It cannot tell me that a patient I was worried about missed her last lab test and cancelled their office appointment, or better yet reach out to the patient to ask why.
HCB News: In the future, how might a physician’s interaction with the EHR be different than it is now?
DA: Much less of it! Hopefully the EHR becomes an extension operating in the background – a functional and cognitive relief in care delivery. The perfect EHR would be like my mitochondria: busily working in the background, but I don’t have to think about them. I rarely think about my mitochondria, but I am glad they are there.
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