Medicine & Technology 22 Jan 2005 09:22 pm
A national system of digitized medical records
It seems that something that I've wanted to do for a while is becoming a reality. Moving from a paper records system to a system of digital records would be cost-saving in the long run, but expensive up front. But even more valuable than the saved money is what could be achieved with the data. Quoting myself:
Free (anonymous) access to academics so they can spot trends and make predictions and cull data from far more research than they've ever been able to do. I'd want all medical records indexed that we have, be they 50 years old or older. That means access to records from fifty years ago until that exact moment in time. This would make retrospective longitudinal studies easier to do, and more accurate. And they could theoretically be done in a matter of seconds. All patients' data, would, of course, be anonymous, unless they were a current patient, in which case their information would have a name attached to it for only those that should have it: their doctor, pharmacy, and perhaps their insurance company (albeit in a limited way). All privacy laws would be respected.
Now quoting from the article:
Yesterday, a group of 13 health and information technology organizations gave the Bush administration its recommendations for just such a road map for a national health information network.
The group's report suggesting the principles that should guide the creation of such a network made an emphatic call for open, nonproprietary technical standards for communication across the network.
The information on a patient inside a doctor's office, the report contends, must be capable of being sent across the network freely to hospitals, laboratories, specialists, insurers and researchers, if the promise of improved care and reduced costs are to be achieved.
All I can say is, it's about time. I hope they move forward with this rather than sit on their thumbs like so often happens with a beauracracy. Sure it's not my company making a fuckton of money, but it's still something that needs to be done. The question is "when?", and "how?"; not "if."
on 20 Mar 2005 at 12:03 am 1.omg? » More on the proposed digital health network said …
[...] igital health network Filed under: Technology, Medicine — Rian @ 11:04 am I posted a couple of days ago about the proposed system for digitizing medical records. Well eight of the tech ind [...]
on 22 Jul 2005 at 10:09 am 2.polyscience.org » Medicare to give away its medical software for free said …
[...] tates. The software will be available to practitioners in August. As someone who has been very interested in digitizing all medical records, this is very cool. T [...]