Actionable Health Information

Burnt out? Overwhelmed? Dismayed?

There is enough information out there about health care, health information technology, and health care reform to make one’s head spin. (I’m thinking along the lines of the 1973 movie The Exorcist and it ain’t pretty.)

For weeks, discussions of “meaningful use” of EMRs surfaced anywhere and everywhere. First, how do you define “meaningful”? Second, are we talking about EMRs being meaningful to doctors and health insurance companies? Does it matter if EMRs are meaningfully used by patients?

Oh, yeah, and what is an EMR, anyway? There isn’t a neat and tidy agreed-upon definition of EMR (or EHR or PHR). Fortunately, there are not huge differences in how they are defined, but the lack of precision makes productive conversation difficult.

Hal Amens offered a ray of clarity by differentiating between rational and actionable information about EMRs:

Each element is part of something valuable but too fragmented to see what that something is. Too many competing interests and points of view with almost no participation by those who will realize the real value—patients.

I think he’s on to something there: actionable information.

In a subsequent post, he writes about the transition from EMR 1.0 to EMR 2.0. Interesting. Will HIT stimulus funds be invested solely in 1.0 EMRs or will investments include innovative, flexible, and dynamic 2.0 EMRs? What does "EMR 2.0" look like? I suspect it involves actionable health information and the people who could act upon that information (a.k.a., patients).

Yep, patients.