What is Wrong with EMR? (Panel Proposal) James J. Cimino, M.D. Associate Professor, Department of Medical Informatics, Columbia University 161 Fort Washington Avenue, New York, New York 10032 USA Phone: (212) 305-8127 Fax: (212) 305-3302 Email: ciminoj@flux.cpmc.columbia.edu Web: http://www.cpmc.columbia.edu/homepages/ciminoj/ Jonathan M. Teich, M.D., Ph.D. Director, Clinical Information Systems Research & Development, Partners Healthcare System Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School 850 Boylston Street, Suite 202, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467 USA Tel. (617) 732-9072 Fax (617)731-3690 E-mail: jteich@harvard.edu Web: http://www.partners.org/nif/preceptors/teichbio.html Vimla L. Patel, Ph.D., DSc Professor, Departments of Medicine and Psychology Director, Center for Medical Education McGill University 1110 Pine Avenue West, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 1A3 Phone: (514) 398-4987 Fax: (514) 398-7246 Email: patel@hebb.psych.mcgill.ca Web: http://www.psych.mcgill.ca/perpg/fac/patel/ Jiajie Zhang, Ph.D. (Panel Organizer) Associate Professor, Department of Health Informatics, University of Texas at Houston 7000 Fannin Street, Suite 600, Houston, TX 77225 USA Phone: (713)-500-3922 Fax: (713)-500-3929 Email: Jiajie.Zhang@uth.tmc.edu Web: http://acad88.sahs.uth.tmc.edu/ Abstract An ideal EMR should be able to provide complete, accurate, and timely data, alerts, reminders, clinical decision supports, medical knowledge, communications, and other aids at all points of care for all healthcare professionals at all times in a way the quality of healthcare can be dramatically improved. However, these promised functions are far from being realized in current EMR, and the resistance to current EMR from healthcare professionals is still strong. Will these promised functions ever be realized? Will EMR ever be accepted universally by healthcare professionals? What is wrong with EMR? The participants of this panel will identify and debate the fundamental problems of current EMR, and they will make recommendations that could potentially make EMR closer to its promised functions. In their view, although from different perspectives, an ideal EMR is not impossible. To achieve its promised functions, however, the first goal that has to be satisfied is that an EMR must be usable. General Program Description With the rapid advancement of information technology and the explosive growth of electronic medical information over the past decade, a natural happening in health care was the implementation of comprehensive Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems. EMR has the potential to make a highly significant contribution to the advancement of medicine and to the improvement of the quality of healthcare. An ideal EMR should be able to provide complete, accurate, and timely data, alerts, reminders, clinical decision supports, medical knowledge, communications, and other aids at all points of care for all healthcare professionals at all times in a way the quality of healthcare can be dramatically improved. It should include the old useful functions and overcome the known problems of paper-based records, provide new useful functions that are not available from paper-based records, and at the same time it should not generate new problems associated with the electronic medium. However, despite of tremendous efforts and noticeable achievements, current EMR still has many non-trivial problems that