Shared EMRs

I know medicine and I know computers. Since I started tracking my cholesterol in 2002, I've kept a spreadsheet on my computer. Since physical devices come and go, I switched it to Google Docs a year or so ago. In my current explorations of EMR technology, I've gotten a Google Health account and have started to enter my data into it.

It took me 10 minutes just to get the Total Cholesterol entered with appropriate history. I haven't even bothered with the HDL and LDL as separate data entry streams. My payoff was that it was easily graphed, but I could have gotten that out of my spreadsheet. My internist is a solo practitioner, which is somewhat of an anomaly. But even people going to a big practice today don't have their records at the Cleveland Clinic or Deaconess or one of the other small handful of forward thinking health care organizations that can be imported automatically into Google Health.

Isn't that where we need to get? I can't imagine those with less technical patience than we engineer-types would bother with direct data entry. And today, even if I entered it all, it's not clear that my doctor could or would use it. Nor would an ER doc know it was there. But the record may contain vital information that is relevant to my treatment.

We've got a long way to go, but the technology exists to get there. What we need is appropriate leadership that understands that.