Here is the presentation that Dr. Paul Veregge and I gave at TEPR 2006. Paul did all the work (thanks Paul):
Data Mining for Disease Management and Patient Communication
I call it the Poor Man’s EHR. It demonstrates how you can achieve many of the benefits of an EHR by data mining your existing systems. It is a great approach if you don’t have $60M in your pocket.
True story…I personally know of an instance where a CEO had his assistant email the CIO to ask why he thought doctors don’t want to use CPOE. Do you understand the irony?
I know that conventional wisdom is that an Electronic Health Record will be good for trees. But, I am finding the two to be incompatible. At our Affinity clinics we have an authentication system on our exam room PCs that uses the physician/nurse fingerprint to log them in. It also uses an ultrasonic detector to lock the PC when they walk away. It is a pretty cool system.
One of our doctors planted several trees on Arbor Day weekend. When he returned to work on Monday the system would no longer recognize his fingerprints. Apparently he had roughed up his hands too badly. We put him on a prescription of liberal doses of hand cream. That seemed to fix things after a day or two.
Candid CIO 