American spirit and Innovation never ceases to amaze me. I just receive a call from an entrepreneur. The claim – ‘a better EMR that can solve today’s problems.’
I spent about an hour talking to the founders, probing, prodding, searching for that elusive single breakthrough that could classify as revolutionary.
Instead, what I found was compromise.
Right now, a better mousetrap is not enough. I’ve been talking with so many experts that are trying hard to find an answer. There has even been some chatter about using Scribes.
The biggest challenge is at the point of care where real interaction happens between the provider and patient. This comment summarises the sentiment:
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“We do not have enough time to pay attention, listen carefully when face to face with our patients. I believe we ought to fix that”
Various technologies – templates, voice recognition, handwriting recognition – nothing measures up. Nothing allows complete undivided attention, an undivided eye-eye contact between provider and patient. Unless providers continue doing what they always did – scribble on paper, dictate their finding in a microphone. Hire someone to enter all the data and transcribe into an EMR. Now we are talking about the costs and affordability.
In all other industries, we have been able to reduce overheads with technology. Scribes, transcribers and other help increase overheads. Isn’t something fundamentally wrong here?
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