Final Post
Introduction
Throughout the course of this class, I have been fascinated about the role of data in shaping our world today. This fascination, especially how it relates to healthcare, was captured a few years ago when I attended a lecture about information technology and information sharing as it related to the health industry. The speaker, a former UA graduate currently working with Microsoft, told a story of a rare childhood disease with no real cures due to the complexity are rarity of the illness (they had no real data on it and had no idea how to treat it). Her company worked with doctors all over the world to set up a database where information the collected about this disease could be shared and analyzed by doctors all over the world. The result: doctors were able to greatly increase the survival rate of these children and hope to one day find a cure for good. This story, coupled with more I began to learn about Electronic Health Records led me to want to investigate what EHRs were, how doctors and health organizations were able to successfully use them to treat patients, and what the future of EHRs hold.What did I learn?
I learned that EHRs are incredible complex systems. Before this class, I had no real idea what an electronic health record encompassed besides just being a "digital version" of the folder they wrote in. I learned that these records can hold your whole medical history, as well as lab results, diagnosis, treatments, etc. EHRs provide your doctor with access to everything they need to know about you. These systems are setup and organized so that information is saved by date and time, as well as who input the information. The other great thing about these records is the easy accessibility involved with them. Patients that live on the east coast but are on the west coast when they need to see a doctor can have their EHR sent from their primary care physician to whoever they are seeing, saving time and paper resources to print the information out. Also, it provides doctors with more information so that they can make better decisions and provide better care.Another thing I learned is how difficult EHRs can be to implement and use. A close family friend of mine, a doctor at the VA, talked at length about how EHRs were changing how doctors go about their business. The biggest thing he noted an EHR does is increase a doctor's accountability. When doctors receive any information as it pertains to a patient (lab results, x-rays, etc.) they have to respond immediately, as the EHR records when they viewed something and when they received it. He described it as,"Once you get a notification, you pretty much have to drop everything you're doing, read and respond." However, he didn't say whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. He acknowledged that perhaps once a younger, more technologically literate generation (one that grew up with technology like cell phones, personal computers, and the internet) start taking over as doctors and nurses that maybe this technology could be utilized more efficiently. "Until, that is, someone younger than you guys comes along with newer technology."
The biggest issue with EHRs and data sharing is security. All of the sensitive information stored in EHRs makes them an attractive target for hackers and thieves. Hospitals and healthcare companies store all of this information in large, centralized databases and store them on the cloud. While this is great for accessibility and sharing, it is also much more risky to keep out of the wrong hands. What does the future hold for security of electronic health information? Utilizing systems like blockchain and end to end encryption. Blockchain, already revolutionizing finance with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, provides a safe way for information to be stored and encrypted and does not require a centralized system to protect and verify the data.
In Summary
This project provided me with a great opportunity to better understand how healthcare and doctors manage and utilize data. The biggest thing I learned from this project is the implications and effects EHRs have on the future of medicine. Personalized medicine, AI medicine, the human genome, all of these rely on the information and data that is input, managed, and stored in electronic medical records. Whatever the future holds for medicine, electronic health records will play a major part of.
According to what we have discussed throughout the entire semester, topics related with data were not uncommon to see. One thing that we both need to compromise is that data, has became the most valuable resource in today's society. Indeed, the growing technology has achieved a point where huge amount of data are used as the demanding fuel to achieve our goals. As for healthcare industry, what we know is that there must be a tendency to adapt to information technology, but what we might not so sure about is that how difficult it is.
ReplyDeleteI really like that you starting from share your own experience, which shared a story from a former UA graduate, and it helps us to understand the motivation of your research. I think we both shared a same opinion toward to what is EHRs before taking the class, I know it maybe helpful but I don't know how and I know the implementation must be hard but I don't know why. Fortunately, I think both your presentation and this final post gave me a very comprehensive picture of what is EHRs and why it is important to both patient and doctors. Now, I know that EHRs enable doctors to access all the information about patient's history and also give the patients an opportunity to get involved to their own treatment. Still remembering that at week 10, we were showed a short video that lacking of access to those health records may impact the treatment from Seinfeld's episode.
In the future, I would like to investigate the competition between data sharing security and the advantages that EHRs would bring to us. In other words, giving all the benefits about EHRs will patients and doctors still willing to use it when facing the security issue. Regardless, I think you did a great job on introducing us to your project, and the examples from yourself helped a lot to understand the difficulties of implementation EHRs.
Thank you Daniel for discussing the importance of EHR in the future of medicine. The topic echoes what we have learnt in class. It was great to learn that your primary research reiterated the difficulties of implementation and gave insight into the case of increased accountability. The issue of EHR and Health Information Exchange (HIE) is common knowledge since 2011. It would be helpful to understand more specific examples of overcoming HIE issues. Blockchain integration to enhance secure data transfer in the exchange is a great example.
ReplyDeleteIn addition to the information presented in your final, it would be great to see a futuristic outlook as to what lies ahead for EHR. I did see intersection of my project and EHR, and it would be great to see your comment either here or on my blog to see how data analytics can change the EHR platform in the future. Cheers!
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