Why Electronic Health Records Should Be Wikified

Clinical documentation is an inescapable part
of a clinician’s everyday experience. It is one of the “arts” of medicine
rarely formally taught. Instead, most clinicians learn how to write a note in
call rooms and side halls, usually through some hasty teaching by a harried
resident. The clarity that is asked of medical students is too often replaced
by the brevity insisted upon by long hours and heavy workloads.

Electronic health records (EHRs) are
essentially digital recreations of paper charts without leveraging how
technology can be an improvement over paper. 
Unfortunately, despite their advances in security and a near-guarantee
that data within a patient’s chart really does belong to that patient, EHRs
have increased workload and have yet to enable routine exchange and use of
disparate data necessary to capture the patient’s story. Like a
propeller-driven car, they are ill-suited to modern needs.

In our recent Academic Medicine article, we proposed a completely new way of clinical documentation, following the successful lead of Wikipedia in the general knowledge domain. After some initial skepticism, Wikipedia has become humankind’s largest repository of knowledge and is the most-visited non-commercial website. Why should we not follow this successful model? There are numerous advantages that a collaborative health record could have, although some legitimate concerns led us to suggest that this concept would best be tested as a pilot.

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Source: Academic Medicine Blog - October 15, 2019 Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Guest Author Tags: Featured Guest Perspective academic medical center electronic health records medical education patient care Source Type: blogs