Review: EHR, A Systems Analysis of the Medications Domain

A while back I was provided with a review copy of the book, Electronic Health Record: A Systems Analysis of the Medication Domain, by Alexander Scarlat, MD. This book is intended to serve as a practical book about electronic health/medical records systems as used in acute care settings. (For the purposes of this review, the term EHR is intended to refer to both EHRs and EMRs.) There are two audiences for the book. The first group includes clinicians with little or no expertise in information technology. There are plenty of books for clinicians that provide an introduction into the common capabilities of an EHR. Scarlat’s book goes a step further, providing the understanding and tools to be able to collaborate with the IT folks who are implementing an EHR so that clinicians can actively participate and communicate their needs and preferences in an unambiguous way. The second audience includes IT professionals who lack in depth knowledge and understanding of clinical workflows that are automated in the typical EHR. For them, the book details what is perhaps the most complex and challenging EHR application, medication ordering. For several years, as EHRs have been implemented and used, there has been a growing awareness of the impact of EHRs on patient safety. This awareness revolves around the fact that how EHRs are implemented, how specific workflows are automated, can have a negative or positive impact on patient safety. The challenge here is that clinicians are not IT ...
Source: Medical Connectivity Consulting - Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Tags: Healthcare IT Patient Flow Source Type: blogs