Could EMR Technology Benefit from Social Media?

Electronic records are the future when it comes to medical record keeping. Handwritten records on paper are slowly and gradually becoming a thing of the past as EMRs and EHRs start to fill in their place. EMRs (electronic medical records) and EHRs (electronic health records) are means of saving and updating patient records electronically. The difference between them is how much each can contain and who can view them. When it comes to EMRs, each physician a patient goes to will have a different EMR as each doctor will start from scratch to create an EMR for that patient. EHRs are much more inclusive. They usually have data that is shared between all doctors taking care of a patient. A patient’s family doctor, cardiologist, and endocrinologist for example would all have access to the same EHR and updates made by each of them would show to the others. This makes it a more universal tool that has more information about the patient that is constantly being updated.

Electronic records have plenty of benefits and may have even more uses in the future. Despite all of their perks, lots of physicians are still hesitant to make the complete switch from paper to electronic records. There are lots of reasons they still don’t want to make the switch such as less patient communication and the fact that it can be too time consuming.

If nothing else, electronic records are at least easily accessible, stored, and organized. Paper records and documents can be very hectic. You would need an excellent filing system in order to make sure that every new piece of medical information about a patient is added to their file then stored correctly so that you can retrieve it later on. These issues are somewhat irrelevant when it comes to electronic records because retrieval of electronic documents is as easy as using the search future on your computer or data keeping software. You can also regularly back up patient data to make sure none of it gets lost. Of course you don’t have to worry about anything being lost or not being capable of finding it because it’s all right there in the original file or back up copy if needed.

One promising future application of EMRs is their integration with social media. Since they can be so easily shared it would make interactions between physicians much simpler. If you’re an endocrinologist and would like to discuss a patient’s diabetes with their cardiologist, you could do this by sharing their EMR (or EHR which would be accessible to both of you) and discuss their condition via video chat for example. Right now people don’t need to actually go places to get anything done. We even shop online right now. So why should two doctors get in a room to discuss a common patient unless it was really necessary? They could simply accomplish this via video chat or other electronic means of communication such as email or even texting if they’re both comfortable with it.

Another way to take advantage of social media and electronic records would be for patient use as well. The result of a patient’s investigation could be uploaded to their EHR which would then make it accessible to them and their doctors. If a family doctor requests a lipid profile for example, then upon uploading the results to the EHR the patient could then email the doctor asking him or her what their results mean and whether anything needs to be done. This could save time for both the patient and the doctor. If the lipid profile turns out to be normal then what’s the point of having the patient come into your office and wait just to hear the good news in 5 minutes then be on their way? Of course if you feel that the results are worthy of a visit, then you can simply reply to the patient’s inquiring email by telling them that they should come in so you can discuss the results together in person.

Social media and technology can makes lives much easier, but you never want to do that at the expense of a patient. Of course, it’ll make you uncomfortable to tell the patient that they have poorly controlled cholesterol levels or an even worse test result, but you can’t use social media to work around your discomfort. If a patient has an unfortunate result or you need to deliver bad news then you should always do it in person rather than hide behind a screen.

Unfortunately despite all of their potential uses and current benefits there’s still a lot of resistance when it comes to utilizing electronic health/medical records. Lots of doctors today still prefer using paper records and faxes to send and receive information from other physicians. A lot of doctors have expressed their discontent with the software itself and with how time consuming it can be. There’s also the issue of decreased doctor patient communication while using a tablet or other electronic device to input notes from an interview with a patient.

Physicians who complete the data entry themselves without the help of an assistant find it to be very time consuming. The thing is that things don’t get better with time. As time goes on they still find it to be as time consuming which probably adds even more to their frustration. Another flaw of electronic records is that the user interface of these data entry programs isn’t clinically friendly. Basically, the way a doctor thinks or would usually record notes on a paper has a certain format. Unfortunately, programs used to create electronic records don’t follow the same format that the doctor has developed over time which can also make things more difficult.

A major issue with electronic record taking and keeping is reduced eye to eye contact. Have you ever tried to maintain a steady face to face conversation to someone while texting? It’s almost impossible and you almost always feel like you can’t keep up your end of the conversation. If you’re too busy inputting data into a screen then you can’t give the person you’re talking to your undivided attention. On top of this, some physicians experienced that medical information wasn’t updated on EHRs. Your patient’s family doctor would update their EHR, but you wouldn’t get that data. You would then have to rely on fax just like the old days.

When they do work, EHRs can be too much of an overload to a physician. Imagine receiving over a dozen emails a day about EHR updates and other alerts. There would be no possible way for a physician to be able to go through all of that and extract all the relevant medical information. Their phone would simply be buzzing every hour or so with a new alert that will probably end up being something insignificant.

30 years ago it would’ve been impossible to predict electronic health records. Now, despite some resistance, they’re slowly becoming the standard. Yes they may have flaws, but with time these flaws should be worked out. Everything has problems at the start of it and with time it becomes better and more usable. Even when computers were invented the idea of being able to video chat with someone was inconceivable, but now it can be done through our phones. We don’t have the full spectrum of use for electronic records yet and there may be even more applications in the future to make it even more useful for all physicians.