There is a lot to talk about. Year end is for reflection. Year beginning is for looking forward. We are reticent to predict (as in Doctor, “how long does she have to live?”), but it seems as if all the buzz of stimulus monies, of EMRs, of personal health, of debate over health care, some fundamentals have been forgotten. Forget fundamentals, disregard principles, abandon commitments, but if you do so, you will be reminded that you “Can’t Fool Mother Nature”.

So we want to look forward to where ClickCare will fit in.

Three diverse concepts relate to each other: EMRs, Twitter with information overload, and the Cloud.

Many of us have made large, very large, investments in licensing, infrastructure and workflow for EMR/EHRs. We have spent a lot of human capital to be sure that we get on the wagon with meaningful use. We have kept a very close eye on stimulus money. Why would we want to challenge ourselves even more? Why, then, are we unsure of ourselves?. Perhaps, we feel that the fable of the Emperor’s New Clothes might come true. Perhaps, we can see no end in sight.

The Emperor's New Clothes

First, we should feel satisfied and confident that the EMR is already advancing. Electronic subscribing and fewer scattered repositories of patient information are most valuable. So while we worry that the “truth might come out”, all is not lost. The team at ClickCare is very committed to being sure that the EMR becomes an even more valuable resource because ClickCare and iClickCare can magnify it and fill the gaps that most fear to mention. There are limits to the EMR. Dr. Alok A. Khorana eloquently and wisely describes them in his brief essay, Physician as Typist, in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

One point is the lack of focus on communication–his EMR author with him as the typist:

“I stare at the primary care physician’s note in front of me. I have been concerned about our mutual patient’s hypertension. I believe it has been exacerbated by the use of bevacizumab, and I have referred her back for additional management. All I need is an acknowledgment of the problem and a treatment plan. The note that I have received is three pages long and is filled with unrelated laboratory values, scan results, and jumbled-up text.”

In contrast were other notes, generated “by hand”:

I get other notes, too, from providers that haven’t yet adopted an EMR system. I made a recent referral for a patient with hematuria to a urologist. In a day or two, I received a one-page summary of the problem, including a differential diagnosis, the findings on cystoscopy, and the plan for additional surveillance. It was, really, all I needed. Another oncologic surgeon with whom I share patients always mentions the patient’s profession in the first sentence of the letter. It tells me something about the care that a surgeon who cares to find out such details will provide. However, as our institution transforms from a hybrid to a completely EMR system, these unique styles are likely to disappear.

What is the reason there is a difference between man and machine? Dr. Khorana perceptively notes:

“Recall that there are two major narratives associated with the physician-patient encounter. The first is the narrative told by the patient to the physician. The starting point of this narrative is relatively uniform: the complaint that brought the patient in. From here onward, however, the narrative can be remarkably free flowing and often tangential. To make sense of this free-flowing story, we as providers resort to a second narrative. The physician’s narrative repackages the patient’s tale, but in a format that serves the scientific goal of the note, which is to reach a diagnosis and treatment plan. Of necessity, it requires the act of listening closely and mindfully to the patient first.”

This article is clearly and cogently written. Reading it is highly recommended.

The reaction

What we would add is that ClickCare takes that very “act of listening closely and mindfully to the patient first”, and allows the listener to act upon it subsequently and cooperatively with other colleagues. Not with every patient, not with every visit, but when necessary and appropriate, to do so easily and quickly. Indeed, ClickCare offers the patient an audience of more than just one.

Another way of looking at this, is that there is too much information, and that communication is not taking place. Here are excerpts from an interview on the blog GIGAOM.

Om Malik, the blogger is interviewing Evan Williams, the cofounder of Twitter:

Om Malik: Ev, when you look at the web of today, say compared to the days of Blogger, what do you see? You feel there is just too much stuff on the web these days?,

Evan Williams:I totally agree. There’s too much stuff. It seems to me that almost all tools we rely on to manage information weren’t designed for a world of infinite info. They were designed as if you could consume whatever was out there that you were interested in.

Om Malik:Do you think that the future of the Internet will involve machines thinking on our behalf?

Evan WIlliams: Yes, they’ll have to. But it’s a combination of machines and the crowd. Data collected from the crowd that is analyzed by machines. For us, at least, that’s the future. Facebook is already like that. YouTube is like that. Anything that has a lot of information has to be like that. People are obsessed with social but it’s not really “social.” It’s making better decisions because of decisions of other people. It’s algorithms based on other people to help direct your attention another way.

They also discuss immediacy and relevancy.

Om If you were starting Twitter today – same service, but in a world that is very mobile, very multi-touch driven and a very portable web – what would it look like?

Ev: I’d have to think about that for a while but i don’t think it looks that different than what we have today. Twitter is a natural fit for mobile – it has the immediacy. There is nothing significantly missing, but (we) need to really boost relevancy. If you can’t read everything, then (what is that) you really do need to know right now.

Immediacy creates a need for mobility. Mobility creates a need for immediacy. Again, ClickCare supports and enables the EMR by enabling both immediacy and mobility regardless of which EMR was purchased.

Which brings us to the Cloud, and our last prediction about where ClickCare fits in. Many will become comfortable with the Cloud, immediacy and access. There are some who already expect it. The last mile of internet access not with standing (ClickCare can use 3G and Edge), communication with pictures and words can be the norm. We will expand more on this in another post.

In the meantime our prediction is that the patients will begin to get better care this year. We just need to look ahead and beyond.