Is there, in existence or in creation, a standardized protocol or schema for representing medical records? We got all these separate EMR systems in place, but they can't communicate with each other. If we had a standardized format for representing health records electronically, having inter-facility EMR communication would not be too far beyond trivial (methinks).

Apparently Obama has pledged that all health care records will be electronically stored by 2014, so this definitely needs to be standardized.......... If anyone knows anybody working on this, I am very interested to collaborate with them. ;)

Ah I have been learning a lot about this in the past week. This field is perfect for a comp sci major aspiring to become a physician. I have found out that there are indeed Interoperability Specifications being developed by the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel. I look forward to learning even more in the many days to come, I'll report back if I find anything super cool (:

For what its worth, I think its a great idea to standardize records. It'd make life easier from coding specialists on up to docs, especially with the tech usage of iPads and the like going up.

Think about this. ER doc can pull up records from previous ER visits, primary care office, etc. Streamlines things and its good for the patient as far as drug interactions, etc.

Ah I have been learning a lot about this in the past week. This field is perfect for a comp sci major aspiring to become a physician. I have found out that there are indeed Interoperability Specifications being developed by the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel. I look forward to learning even more in the many days to come, I'll report back if I find anything super cool (:

Believe the standard is HL7, but it's very loose and does not require interoperability between different implementations. Had been meaning to look into it some more, but haven't yet.

It's not in vendors' interests to make things easily exchangeable. Lockin is part of their business strategy.

You might want to look into OpenVISTA as well.