I look forward to the day that seeing these records in a physician's office without electronic or mobile access will feel as ancient as looking at this large motorola mobile phone that was my family's first growing up.
I look forward to the day that seeing this type of computer printer paper in a physician's office will be as unfamiliar as these paper notes are to today's texting savvy teens.
I look forward to the day that healthcare apps are used as common as a prescription pad, and are no longer a novel concept.
Progress is hard in our slow-to-change current medical system. However, I will always remember to never give up as demonstrated in this precious picture circulating recently on Pinterest. Proper perspective makes impossible tasks become possible. This is my perspective as I begin to research the FDA process for approval of integration of an accessory app (EndoGoddess App) with medical devices (glucometers)...the first step in what is likely to be a year long journey, day #1 today!
As someone who has embraced the digital age, I still see a need for paper, or a longer-lifespan duration thereof: what happens when the computer crashes, the Internet (and even electricity) are lost due to a storm or natural disaster, when our "cloud" providers get acquired by hostile interests (or go bankrupt), when EHRs, PHRs, and everything else we find necessary for e-practice (and even the rest of life in this political system) are held hostage, or our data compromised, by either coding errors or acts of cyberterrorism?
ReplyDeleteNot so long ago, I stored copies of newsletter and coorespondence archives on 5.25" diskettes. Not only do I not have any diskette reader in the many computer systems in our house, but some of the standard, will-never-go-out-of-date programs I used... have, and the data can only be retrieved through whatever printouts have survived. Because of the technology of both laser printing and inkjet printing, that means "anything that was printed on my old dot-matrix printer", except that I went cheap-and-green on the paper, and it's not as likely to last half as long as my handwritten class notes from high school (30+ years ago)...