CHIME19 Themes - Embrace Digital, Open Notes and Artificial Intelligence
CHIME (College of Health Information Management Executives) conferences have a history of sponsoring thought provoking and leading edge speakers. I recognized a recurring theme while attending CHIME19: increasing patient engagement through the use of digital tools and open notes*. Some of my personal notes on the topics follow.
Day 1’s keynote speaker, Rana Foroohar, global business columnist at The Financial Times, spoke of how healthcare needs to embrace digital as healthcare lags behind other industries using digital technology.
Day 2’s keynote speaker, Wendy Sue Swanson, MD, is the founder and chief of digital innovation at Seattle Children’s Hospital. She was one of many who spoke about Open Notes and how all healthcare facilities should embrace this for better patient engagement. She has since tweeted “My comment at #CHIME19 about @myopennotes was basically this: if you're not "open" with notes yet, you're not yet patient-centered. You're just not. Until patients have notes & full-access to their data, you're not there yet...”
Steve Hess, CIO and CT Lin, MD CMIO at UCHealth in Colorodo have a digital experience steering group and are actively engaging with patients. For 17 years, they have been sharing test results and communicating with patients online. They use Epic portals My Health and My Chart and Open Notes. Online scheduling has resulted in 2800 visits scheduled each month-all physician specialties. They are increasing patient engagement with digital tools and publish physician satisfaction scores and comments.
Closing keynote speaker was Eric Topol, MD. He is a leading innovator in medicine today and specializes in the use of artificial intelligence. He is a cardiologist, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, executive vice president of Scripps Research and professor of Molecular Medicine. Topol spoke about preparing the healthcare workforce for a digital future.
Dr Topol calls his clinic the “undoing clinic”. He looks to take away unneeded procedures with the use of digital tools. For example, ECG tests are expensive and tools are now free i.e., Apple Watch. Everyone should own their data. This results in autonomy for patients and more time for doctors to help patients.
“We have to get the Care back in Healthcare. Get back the human factor in medicine.” He has since tweeted “@EricTopol · Nov 5 Just give patients THEIR medical data instead of this nonsense”
*OpenNotes is the international movement that’s making health care more transparent. It urges doctors, nurses, therapists, and others to invite patients to read the notes they write to describe a visit. They believe that providing ready access to notes can empower patients, families, and caregivers to feel more in control of their healthcare decisions, and improve the quality and safety of care. Doctors, nurses, social scientists and health services researchers make up the OpenNotes team.
Supported by philanthropies, OpenNotes does not sell software or other products. The OpenNotes team is headquartered in the Division of General Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a 501(c)3 organization and teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School in Boston.
https://www.opennotes.org/about/family/
https://twitter.com/myopennotes?lang=en
My next article will be a follow up to this information: patient satisfaction and technology trends in healthcare.