Dr. Peter Elkin spoke with GHIT contributing writer Brian Robinson on the importance of intelligence in health IT. Please click on the play button below to listen to the Webcast.
Most everyone agrees that electronic health records and health IT in general
hold great promise for increasing the quality of care that patients receive,
but one of the biggest barriers to the adoption of that technology has been
the disruption many doctors feel it would cause to their businesses.
Dr. Peter Elkin, professor of medicine at the Mayp Clinic College of Medicine,
believes a combination of electronic quality monitoring and intelligent
EHRs provide an answer. Together they form the basis for what he calls minimally
invasive informatics, a way to prise the most value out of the information
included in an EHR without requiring more input from the physician.
Elkin, a 25-year veteran of the biomedical informatics
field, says intelligent EHRs are the key to this. They can take the knowledge
locked up in the EHR and present it in such a way that it can be used
for many different purposes and doctors don’t have to learn new
ways to enter information or take time away from looking after their patients.
Elkin thinks this is an approach that’s headed
for widespread adoption. He expects it to be pervasive throughout U.S.
healthcare within the next three to five years, and worldwide within ten
years.
Government Health IT presents Rick Friedman, director of the division of state systems for the Center for Medicaid and State Operations with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in this recent eSeminar regarding how the federal Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services is partnering with state Medicaid and health and human services officials to bring Medicaid into the digital age. Paul McCloskey, Government Health IT editor, moderates.
