Medical information exchange: The patient, doctor, computer triangle

The usual concern is that patients feel left out with the physician is “looking” at the computer. How is this different than the physician looking at the paper chart? While in medical school many years ago I was taught not to make notes while seeing the patient and to do the recording afterward. In today’s environment there is far more data to contend with than there used to be. Achieving ever more stringent theraputic targets are demanded of the physician.

The suprise has been the level of interest that patients show in seeing what is on the computer screen. Patients are participating in the data entry and editing of the data. I have heard that physicians are not that interested in graphs. They want to see the data. I think that this is a mistaken response to not haveing seen good graphs. The even bigger suprise is how interested patients are in seeing graphs of their lab results. This is not reported yet but in conversations with physicians from various countries this observation seems to be consistent.