Standardized/Universal Electronic Medical Records

[matto]

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).

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[matto]

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.

 

[matto]

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

 

[Veritas86]

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.

 

[deleted103644]

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.

 

[GH253]

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.

Wait until someone in the records department makes a clerical error and enters something false and embarrassing into your medical record and makes the false and embarrassing information visible to everyone who views your records from now on. Imagine showing up at the ER and and having the nurse ask whether you're currently taking anything for your schizophrenia, which is exactly what happened to me twice, including once even after I took it up with the records department and they promised that they fixed the mistake. Imagine having some some embarrassing, deeply private, albeit minor medical issue that has nothing to do with the the reason for your visit to the hospital or clinic on a given day—you occasionally take Cialis to help you get an erection, for example—and the fact is visible to the attractive nurse attending to you, who also happens to be an old high school classmate and know a lot of of the same people as you. Does he fact that many patients will be humiliated by this obscene violation of privacy count for anything, or do you, like most liberals, fancy yourself as some kind of czar whose judgment everyone else should just have to accept whether they like it or not?