Why Digital Medical Records Could Save Your Life

The Tech Innovators Series is supported by Lenovo. Lenovo does not just manufacture technology. They make Do machines — super-powered creation engines designed to help the people who do, do more, do better, do in brand new ways.

I’m from Los Angeles, went to college in Philadelphia, grad school in Chicago and now live in New York — there is no one place to find my complete and comprehensive medical history. And I’m not alone — on average, an individual has 19 different doctors over the course of his life.

When patients see new doctors, they often spend a chunk of the appointment explaining their ailments and medical history. They may even have bloodwork done, even if they had it done recently at a different doctor’s office.

If the system was digitized and all the information was in one convenient place, doctors visits would be quicker and less redundant. That “convenient place” is the cloud.

More than $20 billion has been earmarked under President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, a.k.a. the stimulus bill) for the transition to electronic health records. San Francisco-based Practice Fusion has taken 120,000 health care professionals digital, storing 22 million medical records in the cloud, accessible anywhere there’s an Internet connection. By digitizing medical history, physicians can eradicate inefficiencies and medical errors.

Practice Fusion was founded in 2005 by Ryan Howard, whose background is more in SaaS-based technologies than health care. Mashable spoke with Howard to learn more about the importance and the future of electronic medical records.

The Beginnings

Howard arrived in the Bay Area during the dot com gold rush, and worked his way up from tech support to software installation for Brown & Toland, a large physician group in the area. It was there that he saw “bad technology” in the doctor’s office. “The doctors didn’t want to use it, and the software was a pain in the ass. It was all incredibly complex and difficult,” says Howard. “It was through that experience that I realized the massive disconnect between the free, web-based technology, like Google, that revolutionized the consumer market, and what was going on in the health care sector.”

So he founded Practice Fusion in 2005 and launched the free electronic medical record service in 2007. Free is the operative word — at the time, Howard says, the average EMR system cost $50,000 per doctor each year.

“Paper is dangerous and inefficient, it doesn’t belong in health care any longer.”

Howard says nearly 200,000 people die each year from preventable medical errors, which could be mitigated if doctors go digital. “Paper is dangerous and inefficient, it doesn’t belong in health care any longer,” he says. “Our mission is to enable doctors to save lives by making patient information available anytime, anywhere.”

Benefits for Patients

If Howard and other EMR companies get their way, you’ll have one health record from birth to death, with all of the necessary details in one secure and HIPAA-compliant place. Patients would get more access to their records, and thus, more control over their health. With access to a patient portal, users could view medical and immunization history, make appointments and see physician’s updates in real time. Doctors and patients would be equipped with the knowledge and power to reduce medical errors and duplication of services, which is a waste of both time and money for doctors and patients.

Doctor visits would be smoother and more comprehensive, and doctors won’t have to worry about patients not reporting medical events — like a trip to the ER or a visit to a specialist — because a record of that information will exist in one place, offering a complete picture of the patient’s health.

Benefits for Health Care Professionals

Sure, the digitization of medical records sounds like a dream for doctors, whose offices can be overrun by charts, but such a big transition is usually accompanied by massive fees. Because of the stimulus bill, doctors who digitize (and have a sizable pool of Medicare or Medicaid patients in the practice) are eligible for HITECH reimbursement funds from the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS), ranging from $44,000 to $64,000, which covers the cost of switching to EMR and training staff.

New York-based nurse practitioner Denis Tarrant (pictured above) performs many a house call, always with an iPad in tow for charting and note-taking. Because of his digital practice, he’s eligible for $64,000 in Medicaid reimbursement through CMS.

But beyond the incentives, a digital doctor’s office just runs more smoothly. Lynn McCallum, a doctor in Redding, CA, says having the technology in her exam rooms hasn’t had an adverse effect on her bedside manner and makes her practice more efficient:

“I have a laptop on a small desk on rollers in each exam room. I review meds and chart on the patient as I sit in front of them. This way I can chart on my laptop and still maintain eye contact with my patient. If a referral for a consultation with a specialist is required, or a referral for an imaging study, I send a message to the MA on Practice Fusion, right in front of the patient. Often the entire note is completed before we leave the room. This minimizes my charting time at the end of the day.”

The “message” McCallum referred to is a feature called Chart Share, which enables a doctor to share a patient chart with X-ray, mammogram, MRI or other medical tests with any specialist in the U.S. in real-time for free, with bank-level encryption. That information provides context for the specialist and ensures that the patient’s appointment with him will address the necessary issues faster, without having to go through the preliminary and tedious medical history questionnaire.

Use of the site — including training, licensing and setup — is free both for health professionals and consumers. The site makes money by selling ad space to pharma companies, but these ads are not seen on the consumer-facing side of Practice Fusion. One might argue it’s unethical to market drugs on a site like this, but the ads’ audience is a group of well-educated physicians and can be interpreted as more of a learning tool than a selling tool. And it’s a less invasive and less costly (though perhaps less effective) approach to pharmaceutical marketing than the current standard — sending reps to doctors’ offices with lunch so the rep can get a few minutes of doctor facetime to discuss a new drug on the market.

The Public Health Benefits of Data

Electronic medical records make practicing medicine easier for the doctor and more transparent for the patient, but digitizing records also has promising implications for public health. Already, useful data has been mined — don’t worry, it’s unidentifiable — from the medical histories of the 22 million Practice Fusion patients to ascertain big picture trends in medicine.

Analysis of Practice Fusion data found that the availability of farmers’ markets and fruit consumption is associated with lower body mass index (above). Other useful medical insights already mined from Practice Fusion data includes top diagnoses in primary care, the H1N1.

The Future of EMR

“The future of EMR is similar to the trajectory of all technology: It’s getting cheaper, easier, faster, better,” says Howard. With support of the government and the promise of hassle-free medical visits and improved public health statistics, electronic medical records are bound to become mainstream.

Does your physician use electronic medical records? Would you like him or her to? What are your concerns? Let us know in the comments below.

Series Supported by Lenovo

The Tech Innovators Series is supported by Lenovo. Lenovo makes machines specifically for the innovators. The creators. The people who move the world forward. Machines like the Lenovo ThinkPad and IdeaPad, meticulously engineered with visibly smart second-generation Intel® CoreTM processors to help the people who do, do what’s never been done.