This week Dr. Gabbe shares his insights on the ways in which information technology will advance personalized health care including thoughts on PatientLink Ambulatory and his recent visit to Morehouse Medical Plaza.
Hi! Improving people's lives through personalized health care.
This is something every one of us is doing every day. It's our mission and our promise to our customers.
Some of you are in roles where these efforts are easy to see. You're in direct patient care.
However, many faculty and staff here work in areas that support improving people's lives through systems, services, research, and education.
One service and system I'd like to talk about today is Information Technology, specifically, our electronic medical record. It is widely recognized that the electronic medical record will truly improve people's lives through personalized health care, providing the most up to date information to all of us in healthcare, giving patients the tools to participate in their own health care, and providing information to researchers to truly create the future of medicine.
Earlier this month I had the opportunity to tour the Morehouse Plaza with Drs. Milisa Rizer and Neeraj Tayal. They showed me the MyPatient Link system, a web-based patient tool for managing health care. MyPatient Link is part of our ambulatory electronic patient record that has been rolled out to 19 outpatient offices here. While on my visit, I had a chance to talk to Dr. Chris Lippincott, a resident, his preceptor, Dr. Robert Murden, and Charlotte Ware, the clinic manager. I'd also like to recognize Phyllis Teater in IT for her leadership in making this plan a reality and to all the physicians and staff in the offices for their enthusiasm and their openness to change. In addition, I'm excited as we continue to formulate plans to fund the replacement of our acute care Electronic Medical Record over the next several years. These initiatives will complete an integrated Electronic Medical Record for our patients and our providers and will do away with the remaining paper portions of the patient chart. Feedback has been very positive, and this allows us to help patients in a way we weren't able to do before.
Also, this month, our Information Technology Group led by Dr. Herb Smaltz hosted a national conference about consumerism in health care, specifically around the Personalized Health Record and Electronic Medical Record. With over 200 leaders in Information Technology from all over the country, the conference addressed the challenges, the opportunities, and the benefits to making all patient records electronic. Some of the benefits include helping patients manage chronic diseases, such as diabetes, right from their own home. Using a secure Personalized Health record, patients will be able to monitor their glucose levels and then transmit them to their physician electronically. That way the physician and nurse practitioner can follow the patient and contact him or her when they need to adjust their diet or their medication. Other uses for the technology include telemedicine, where patients have a virtual visit with a physician right on-line. This could be a great tool for those in remote areas, the homebound, and where access to specialists is limited.
Instituting the electronic medical record across all of our hospitals will be a huge undertaking but it's necessary to support personalized health care. Caregivers will have the patient's entire medical history right at their fingertips. Access to this information will improve quality by reducing errors, increasing patient satisfaction, and increasing continuity of care. We won't need to order a repeat test because we can't find a result. This is an investment in our future that will become the foundation for personalized health care.
The possibilities are endless, and I'm confident that with our collective brainpower we'll be at the forefront of this exciting part of personalized medicine today and for many years to come.
Well, have a great week!