Greg Twyford wrote: > Tim Churches wrote: >> >> I suggested to Jon a few weeks ago that a skill which every medical >> student and intern quickly learns is how to take the masses of detail >> and data points about each patient and distil that into a 15 second >> summary of only the situationally relevant information for the ward >> round (maybe a 1 minute summary if it is the first time the patient is >> being seen by the honorary). Computers are great at storing and >> regurgitating the masses of information, but are currently hopeless at >> working out which bits of all that information are relevant in a >> particular situation or point in time. Teaching computers to do that is >> a deep problem, but one which needs to be tackled. > > Tim, > > this is part of the AAPS whinge, recently referenced on this list, about > being forced to use an EHR. > >> http://www.aapsonline.org/confiden/nhincomments.htm > > One view might be that decision support should pick the abnormal > results, but, in a hospital setting there may be great complexity in the > data. > > Maybe doctors will always have this role? > > Then again, when my father in law was in and out of hospital last year > in the months before his death, on one aoccasion he was taken back to > A&E 2 hours after discharge, and A&E had no knowledge of his previous > week's in-patient treatment, and no way of accessing information about it. > > The nurse doing the initial work-up was very grateful when I showed her > the bag of discharge medications. We, unfortunately, had left the > summaries at his home in our anxiety, as it was a crisis re-admission > and his survival looked dubious. > > So, there are lots of much simpler 'in-fill' to do, I'd suggest, before > trying to automate clinical acumen. Just making accessible what is known > would be a great leap forward in these sort of circumstances.
Yes, absolutely, I agree - there many much bread-and-butter information problems to be solved. But working out how to build smarter health information systems (not just bigger ones) also needs to be a longer term gaol. Tim C _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
