Dr Aniruddha Malpani, an infertility expert and a vehement supporter of patient advocacy tells us how electronic magnetic records, if tweaked a little, can prove to be a very useful healthcare and medical tool:
There is no question that electronic medical records (EMRs) can be very useful. They allow doctors to take much better care of patients, because they allow him to record all the important medical information he needs– and he can review this whenever he wants – even from his smart phone. Knowledge is power, for everyone –doctors, patients, caregivers and the healthcare system in general. However, what seems to be a great solution in theory often falls flat in the real world – especially when the amount of noise contained in the EMR drowns out the information it contains. Most doctors hate EMRs, because they are so difficult to use – and the reason for this is that they were originally developed as tools to enhance revenue collection, rather than to improve medical care.
The problem with today’s EMRs is that they are template based. This seems to make sense, because each template is designed for a particular specialty. Now while the template works very well for the particular expert who designs the template, it does not work well for other doctors, each of whom has a different personal style. They now need to relearn how to enter data for their patients into this EMR, and most doctors hate this
Not only does this reduce their productivity because of the learning curve, they also need to change the way they take a history. This is a huge challenge, because it’s hard for doctors to change their clinical habits. It’s also very unfair to expect them to do this, which is why so many are so resentful about the fact that they are being forced to use EMRs. Read how technology is making healthcare more affordable
All doctors would happily use an EMR which they can modify in order to suit their personal style. While all EMR companies promise that it’s possible to customize the template, in real life this is a huge pain. The doctor has to raise tickets and send these the IT dept for any changes, and these tweaks cost time and money. Most just get fed up and give up. Even worse, the mindless templates create a tick box mentality, so that doctors start focusing on completing the EMRs expeditiously, rather than providing high quality clinical care. Documentation starts detracting from the patient and hurting the quality of care, rather than enhancing it.
The truth is that EMRs are not user-friendly because they don’t respect the individual doctor’s work flow. EMRs are designed by software engineers, who treat doctors as being intelligent . They believe that once they’ve given them an efficient software tool – a software program which has been proven to work well in one clinic – then doctors should be smart enough to change their habits and start using the program , so that they can achieve the same degree of efficiency and productivity in their own practise. They just cannot understand why doctors refuse to invest the time and energy in learning how to use the program properly. However, doctors are creatures of habit, and they hate being forced to change.
Rather than force doctors to change their habits, it makes far more sense for engineers to spend time and energy in making the EMR more intelligent , so that it can adapt to the doctor’s personal style. The good news is that computer technology has now become increasingly clever , so it can anticipate and adapt to the user’s needs. Amazon and Google do this all the time, as they learn more about my personal preferences, so why can’t EMRs do the same ? As Om Malik (the web and technology writer) says, we seem to be entering the ‘Era of Magical Computing’ — a ‘growing movement to anticipate the computing we want to do – and do it for us.’
This personalization and anticipation will allow EMRs to become much more usable; and allowing this kind of learning will set up a positive virtuous cycle, because the more the doctor uses the EMR, the more it does what he wants it to. The doctor will be able to complete the record much sooner, because this has now been tweaked to his personal preferences. Software engineers need to remember that doctors are knowledge workers , just like they are. They have their personal quirks and idiosyncrasies , and we need to respect and honour these.
A great real life example of this is SwiftKey, which is a keyboard tool that auto-corrects and offers bespoke next-word predictions. SwiftKey Flow offers the ‘mind-reading capabilities of a personalized prediction engine with the convenience of data entry on touchscreen devices’. Using this tool, it’s possible for the EMR to know with high probability what the doctor is going to type in next. The trick is not to force doctors learn new skills and new software programs, but to make the programs more intelligent , so that they can adapt themselves to the way the doctor works. Effectively, each doctor creates his knowledge base in the process of practicing medicine, consistently improving the speed of documentation with each additional case. PraxisEMR has done a great job of implementing this. It’s simple – but not easy!
The good news is that now that most EMRs are hosted on the cloud, it’s possible to use anticipatory computing and adaptive learning, so that the EMR gets modified and customized transparently and painlessly on the fly for each user, without having to involve the IT dept at all.
The author Dr Aniruddha Malpani is an IVF specialist who is also very passionate about improving patient knowledge and patient-doctor relationships. He is a pioneer in the field of information therapy – the right information at the right time for the right person – and blogs at http://blog.drmalpani.
Also read Dr Malpani’s other articles on doctor-patient relationships, patient advocacy and healthcare:
- Why I criticise doctors
- What does a doctor mean when he says: ‘I don’t know’?
- Why do doctors disrespect patients?
- 15 tips to make your doctor’s consultation better
- No doctor can treat a patient without his permission
- 2014 – The year of the Aam Patient
- A layman’s guide to getting the best during a hospital stay
- Medical negligence: How to file a complaint
- Patient rights in India – what you should know
- Have a doctor’s appointment? Make the most of it with these tips
- Patient Rights – how not to get quacked by babas and medical cures
- Medical negligence – how to get justice
- Patient advocacy – why patients need to be given a voice
For similar articles, check out our healthcare section. Health.India.com is now TheHealthSite.com. Follow the all-new site on Facebook and Twitter.
