October 3rd, 2007

Drug industry pounding the table for electronic records

Posted by Dana Blankenhorn @ 9:15 am

Categories: Events, General, Hospital IT, Insurance IT, Medical IT, Medical Office IT, Medical Records, Networking, Research, genetics

Tags: Electronic Record, Patient, Industry, Electronic Health Record, Health Care, E-health, Healthcare, Dana Blankenhorn

As I have noted here many times there is unanimous agreement in Washington about the desireability of total health care automation, of electronic health records (EHRs) or electronic medical records (EMRs) and networks to speed them around hospitals, medical offices, and payment mainframes.

It often seems that only Luddite patients concerned about their “precious privacy” or Luddite doctors concerned about their “precious doctor-patient relationship” are outside the consensus. Even though patients and doctors are supposed to be what medicine is all about.

You can add the drug industry to that consensus. Sidney Taurel, CEO of Eli Lilly, was extolling automation as the cure to his ills during a speech at the Cleveland Clinic yesterday. (Taurel picture from the Lilly web site.)

Taurel said the data from such systems can act as an ongoing “Phase IV” drug trial, using both EMRs and genetic data against prescriptions and outcomes to find “safety signals” which alert companies to the risks and benefits of medicines after they’re on the market.

The benefits to the industry are immense. In his speech Taurel gave a nod to privacy, saying that properly “blinded” data would assure patient rights were not compromised. But at the end of his speech it was just that, a nod.

“We need to open our minds to the notion that electronic health care data represents a legitimate resource - to which access should in most cases be widespread and easy,” he concluded. It’s in the Lilly press release regarding the speech.

This train is leaving the station and it’s putting on speed. Can anything slow it down? Should it be slowed down?