EHRs and The Infinite Chief Complaint
Having seen about 50,000 patients with hand-written charts, and 50,000 patients with Electronic Health Records (EHRs), I am deeply aware of some of the benefits of EHRs. For example, having immediate access to an old EKG has helped prevent unnecessary admissions....
Has the EHR Displaced the Patient?
Most healthcare organizations claim to be patient-centric. I do believe this is their intent. However, as the EHR becomes ever-more central for patient care—from documenting the patients’ presenting concern, to prior medical history, physical evaluation, labs, tests,...
Social Media Companies are AI Companies
My personal mission—and how I hope to spend the next decade or so—is to understand the confluence of health, healthcare, and artificial intelligence in the context of ethics. So why do I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about social media, such as Twitter,...
What would Hippocrates Say About EHR De-Identification?
I often wonder about the ethics of EHR de-identification. Assuming we can make de-identification perfect, with no risk of undoing this de-identification, should we be doing it? Well, as a starting point, and just for fun, let's see what the Hippocratic Oath would say...
Should AI Social Media Analysis be Used to Hire Physicians?
Using IBM Watson, here is a Personality Portrait based on three of my recent blog posts using artificial intelligence and natural language processing: Summary You are heartfelt, somewhat insensitive and skeptical. You are solemn: you are generally serious and do not...
AI Podcast Review: The Deepmind Podcast
For physicians and healthcare executives who are looking for a brief introduction into leading-edge artificial intelligence (AI) research, I recommend listening to the short, eight-part DeepMind Podcast. DeepMind is an AI startup based in London and was recently...
Will AI-Enabled EHRs worsen Cascades-of-Care?
The paper Cascades of Care After Incidental Findings in a US National Survey of Physicians is an important read for anyone who believes artificial intelligence is going to lower healthcare costs. A "Cascade-of-Care" is a medical workup that expands exponentially after...
Physicians, Bill Gates, and 0.887 Tweets per Day
When I talk to physicians about Twitter, they often tell me they think it's a waste of time Perhaps they are right. But then I will pull up Bill Gates’ Twitter account, started in 2010 (see his first tweet below), and ask them why— if indeed it is such a waster of...
What Netflix Can Teach Healthcare
I once read Netflix runs 400 A/B tests on their website at any given time. What this suggests is that each day they are evaluating multiple ways to incrementally improve their website. Why? Because they see their website as a core part of their business. It isn’t seen...
Healthcare’s Lowest Hanging Social Media Fruit: The Pinned Tweet
I can't fathom is why most healthcare organizations don’t spend more time selecting and creating a meaningful “pinned tweet”. (For those of you who don’t know, a pinned tweet is a self-selected tweet which lives right below your profile, and visually will often become...