Medical Records Are Just One Form of Healthcare Information.

In just a few years medicine has taken major steps to move from paper records in individual doctor’s offices to electronic medical records that can be shared with patients and their other physicians. The primary point of coordination of care among a patient’s physicians is moving from the patient—I saw Dr. Adams last month and he told me…—to the patient and her team of physicians who share the same records. The good news is each physician now has more information; the bad news is they have no additional time to analyze it. That is the tip of the iceberg.

At the same time, the marketplace has seen the value of health related information and is rapidly creating new ways to collect that information. Sources as diverse at private individuals working on smart phone apps to corporate giants like Ford Motor, Intel and General Electric are creating new ways to capture more and more health related information. Most of this will be routine but some of the haystacks will have needles of data critical to a healthy future for some patients or even life savings requirements.

Physicians can choose what medical information to collect depending on each patient’s specific circumstances; they can decide what is relevant and influence the volume of physician generated medical information. Patients will make the decisions about the information to be collected from many of the marketplace solutions: Here are my vital signs taken during my bicycle ride last week when the temperature was 89 to 95 degrees and I climbed 1321 feet and averaged 13.2 miles per hour. Here is the data from my Ford car last month and the statistics Intel/GE captured with regard to when I took my medication and how I answered the phone. How good is the data? Are there any needles of critical data?

We are rapidly moving from inadequate amounts of data to overwhelming amounts.

Prior solutions are the source of almost all significant problems. There is a problem on the horizon and now is the time to explore ways to manage the growing amount of data being generated and shared within the medical community and the marketplace. The people who are harnessing computers to capture medical data may be the logical ones to develop ways to capture, assess, integrate and analyze the growing amounts of data or the solution may be out in the marketplace. Stay tuned.

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EMRs: Increasing Complexity and Capabilities II

EMRs, Intel, GE and telehealth for seniors

Intel has been studying technical and societal solutions for problems related to care for the aging for more than ten years. On August 2, 2010, Intel and GE announced the formation of a joint venture that will focus on telehealth and independent living to tackle the increasing global burden of chronic disease and age-related conditions. Said simply, using technology at places other than medical facilities to improve senior health.

Some of these technologies, particularly the diagnostics, will be heavily data oriented. As an example, monitoring and tracking the ways a person uses the telephone to detect changes that are predictors of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s 5 to 10 years before clinical symptoms appear. The analysis is based on subtle changes over a period of time. For an engaging explanation link to a TED MED presentation at http://goo.gl/vALK

More and more data over an extended period of time. Almost certainly, additional providers serving the same or related areas. The providers will deal with the data collection and analysis and then what happens? It needs to be linked to other medical data, both historic and current, analyzed, and made available to the person being monitored so they can be responsible for their own health to the fullest extent possible, to their doctors – seniors almost always have multiple doctors – and the person’s caregivers, and concerned family members. Different forms and presentations of results based on the same data for different uses and users. Complexity and capabilities way beyond the scope of the systems being installed today.

Intel and GE are preparing to do this now. It will be a few years before the impact becomes a major issue but now is the time to design our EMR systems and networks to deal with the increasing need as the population ages and as the technology to assist them advances.

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