{"id":8599,"date":"2018-01-28T17:53:41","date_gmt":"2018-01-28T22:53:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/?p=8599"},"modified":"2018-01-28T17:53:41","modified_gmt":"2018-01-28T22:53:41","slug":"apple-wants-build-electronic-medical-record-heres-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/apple-wants-build-electronic-medical-record-heres-start\/2018\/01\/28\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple Wants to Build an Electronic Medical Record — Here’s Where They Should Start"},"content":{"rendered":"
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WPA Poster 1941, Library of Congress.<\/p><\/div>\n

If you want to get a bunch of clinicians riled up — make them really<\/em> mad — ask them to describe the problems with their current electronic medical record.<\/p>\n

So when a company like Apple announces it plans to introduce an electronic medical record<\/a>\u00a0of sorts, we should rejoice, right?<\/p>\n

This is the company, after all, that leveraged the Think Different<\/em> and It Just Works<\/em> slogans to boast about how easy their products are to use.<\/p>\n

However, before we can celebrate that a famous tech giant will solve the EMR quagmire, remember that this is the same battlefield that has so far flummoxed\u00a0Google<\/a>\u00a0and, to some extent, Microsoft.<\/p>\n

Both those tech giants have struggled to bring sense, accuracy, and usefulness to the chaos of our medical information. The million lines of code written by their software engineers may live somewhere on hard drives and servers, but they are little more than historical records of a failed enterprise.<\/p>\n

Think the software equivalent of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. Ouch.<\/p>\n

Given these past lukewarm approaches (some would call them out-and-out failures), I’d recommend that Apple not be too ambitious.<\/p>\n

Instead, they should focus\u00a0on information that is simple, highly useful, and lends itself perfectly to a unified electronic medical record.<\/p>\n

Not only that, it’s ID-related. And every clinician and patient will benefit.<\/p>\n

Apple, please build us a Universal Immunization Record.<\/em><\/p>\n

Here are the features of this must-have service.<\/p>\n

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  1. Every person would have access to their record through a user-friendly secure access. No complicated password requirements.<\/li>\n
  2. Information would instantly synchronize across multiple locations, akin to what Dropbox<\/a> has perfected (and has been widely adopted by other cloud systems).<\/li>\n
  3. Patients would grant access to their clinicians or other vaccine stakeholders (schools, occupational health departments, immigration offices), who would be able instantly to review and to update the information.<\/li>\n
  4. It will be entirely agnostic about operating system, platform, or device.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Just think how care would be transformed with a widely adopted Universal Immunization Record.<\/em><\/p>\n