ed-informatics.org

An article in the New York Times points up some of the shortcomings of the push for meaningful use of electronic medical records (EMR): it’s vulnerable to fraud. The Department of Health and Human Services is shocked, just shocked, that perhaps some physicians and hospitals may have not been entirely accurate in self-reporting how well […]

As of 2012, a new metric for ED throughput is physician contact time – with the caveat that assigning a physician name on a tracking system, or the time of the first orders, is not adequate to measure this. Surprised? Some docs put their name on the patient as soon as the patient arrives in […]

In the Beginning: VoiceEM Back in 1988, Ray Kurzweil came out with speech-recognition software, including something called VoiceEM. It was an emergency medicine physician charting application; there was also VoiceRAD for radiology. These were DOS programs that ran with that typical DOS 80 character x 25 character text screen. In addition to having a medical-specific vocabulary, VoiceEM had […]

“Out of sight, out of mind.” Ever heard the one about the early translation program that converted this aphorism into Chinese and then back? It came out as “invisible idiot.” Regardless, “out of sight, out of mind” is a good general psychological principle. In any nuclear power plant control station, air traffic control center, AWACS plane, aircraft cockpit, or any busy and confusing medical setting whether […]

Neatness counts. Trying to find my way from the entrance of my 12 year old daughter’s bedroom to the bed to kiss her goodnight, especially if barefoot, is considerably more dangerous than most of the search and rescue and disaster operations I’ve been on. Navigating the screens of medical software often seems like walking in […]