• “As we near 2015, many in the industry predict healthcare will see an integration of social media, cloud computing, and collaborative commons—creating resources that allow consumers to more actively engage with their health through information technology.”
• “primary care facilities and hospitals are not capitalizing on the existence of electronic resources to provide better care for patients and improve efficiency for healthcare providers”
• “Healthcare is the last bastion of mom and pop stores,” ?The first step in healthcare is to make everything digital,”  “The next step is to takes what’s digital, and make sense of it—to make some intelligence out of the information you already have.”
• “Arguably healthcare is a data problem, and we’re trying “Scientists are not thinking of their data as an ingredient to the solution. They’re thinking of it as an ingredient to their next paper,”
• “researchers will have to amend not only what they do, but how they go about doing it—the emphasis will become less about research and clinical data, and more about how that data is stored, accessed, and used”
• “models could also use the power of social networks to give patients access to information and resources provided by other patients with similar conditionals—data that could help patients research and decide on a treatment plan, as well as help physicians make recommendations.”
• “One example would be using personalized data from electronic medical records, combined with data from available studies, to create individualized predictive care models.”

All great ideas held back by cottage industry attitudes and slow adoption of EHRs and PHRs. My only question is, why can’t we have this sooner than 5 years?

In a video on Huffington Post Video last month, the interview at the Cleveland Clinic about the successful EMR still questions whether this success can occur elsewhere. Yes, the implementation was expensive and expensive to maintain but the benefits over paper are quantifiable in terms of quality of care and improved outcomes. Maybe the lessons of successful EMRs have paved the way for others.

Finally, Dr. Cosgrove, CEO at the Cleveland Clinic is interviewed by Fox Business News at the Davos World Economic Forum. He again repeats his contention about the need to address obesity and health care costs. Again, a model or approach to care and costs which others can emulate.

“A doctor first clicks the computer mouse on a particular part of the image, which triggers a search of the patient’s eHR to retrieve the relevant information. The patient’s information corresponding to that part of the image is then displayed, including text entries, lab results, and medical images, such as magnetic resource imaging. The doctor can zoom in on the image to retrieve selective information or narrow the search parameters by time or other factors.”

Can’t wait to see a demo.

A fascinating concept. Why not make it available to PHRs as well?

Related to this is a study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association titled, “Electronic Health Records in Specialty Care: A Time-Motion Study”. This study of 15 physicians and 157 patients concluded that, “Following EHR implementation, the average adjusted total time spent per patient across all specialties increased slightly but not significantly.”

Both of these reports contribute to the ongoing attention needed to the social impacts of EMRs on provider-patient relationships.

Overall, these results are encouraging, but they still show a low level of familiarity with EMRs.