Electronic Health Records (EHR, EMR)

The latest video by doctor/rapper ZDoggMD may not win a Grammy, but it likely strikes a chord with clinicians frustrated by the inefficiencies of their EHRs, lack of interoperability, "meaningless abuse" and outdated technology.

Meaningful use of analytics to improve quality of care and organizational efficiency is contingent on an accessible user-friendly interface. How can "users" find their way back into the "user experience"?

Health organizations are often moving too quickly from EHR implementation to population health and risk-based contracts, glossing over (or skipping entirely) the crucial step of evaluating the quality of the data they're using.

With Stage 2 meaningful use, ICD-10, the HIPAA Omnibus Rule and the Affordable Care Act dominating the agenda these past few years, Beth Israel Deaconess CIO John Halamka, MD, is doing some research to help reshape next priorities.

Electronic health records are altering nearly every aspect of the caregiver-patient relationship -- not to mention changing caregivers' workflows with omnipresent tablets, handhelds, wall mounts and mobile carts. Today, nurses are on the front lines of this transformation.

With most patient data now being recorded in a shareable form, we're poised to accelerate population health IT. Now it's on to the next set of major challenges, which will be front-and-center at HIMSS15: sharing data and putting it to beneficial use.

So you are in the market for a new EMR and you quickly realize that there are hundreds of companies in this market. How do you choose?

Open an electronic healthcare record and click on a field. What happens? Underneath the covers of your EHR application, a lot is going on.

In the Boston marketplace, Partners Healthcare is is replacing 30 years of self developed software with Epic. Boston Medical Center is replacing Eclipsys (Allscripts) with Epic.

There has been some buzz lately about how interoperability is a non-issue. I beg to differ. With increasing pressure from federal initiatives like Meaningful Use Stage 2, there is growing need for information exchange across the industry.