EMR for rheumatology

Gogia, Shashi B. (2007) EMR for rheumatology. In: IAMI 2007, 16-17 Nov 2007, Kochi, India.

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Abstract

A software which is not used is useless. One of our most rewarding recent experiences has been to make an EMR for the exacting needs of one of India's top rheumatologist. A few innovations were part of the large and complex application which we shall be describing. The medical community has been one of the slowest to use ICT in its regular activities. there are many reasons for this including complex needs and a lack of understanding by the ICT developers of medical terminology as well as the flow processes. The current project has been largely successful due to the direct involvement of the medical profession. The authors are part of team providing tertiary care in rheumatology services. The senior author(AM) was previously using document templates made in MS Word which he had kept adding text as and when some new addition was required. The secretary would have a simple job of removing unnecessary details before printing a particular report. This was found satisfactory till there was a felt need to create research papers. A decision was made to convert the existing workflow to a database application which could allow faster searches and create data mining. Reports had to be exactly similar to the existing ones with little change in current workflow processes. Many lessons from this experience will be related.

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