The following article appeared in the May 23, 2019 issue of the HIMSS Clinical Informatics Insights newsletter. A portion of it has been posted here with permission.
Last year, a colleague of mine wrote an apology to clinicians on behalf of all EHR vendors for the pain we’ve put them through. It resonated with many readers, who have soured on the overly hopeful messages of clinical and business transformation coming from the industry. It’s important for all of us to honestly acknowledge where we are, how we got here, and what we need to do to restore the confidence of EHR users — particularly clinicians, whose lives have been irrevocably changed, for better and for worse, by the computerization of healthcare.
But the equally important part of last year’s piece — the part that followed the apology — was a look at “the path forward.” We are already on that path, and it’s already leading to positive changes for our clinical users. Most EHR vendors are now embedding physicians, nurses, and other clinical software users into their development teams. As a result, we’re designing software that’s more mobile, nimble, and intuitive. And we’re testing the usability of our software with real clinical users in real clinical settings, before releasing it.
Now I’d like to look a little further down that path, because there are developments on the horizon that are poised to usher in a whole new era of much-needed usability and efficiency improvements for providers...