One of my regular physician readers, Brian, left the following comment on my post about the mythology of the Perfect EMR.

The reality is that we are now comparing EMR to our iPhone 4s’s. Our consumer technology is so far ahead of hospital technology that it is jarring and annoying to use work tech. This is what I want: “Siri, give me a differential for elevated amylase. Thank you. Now order CBC, Chem 14, TSH and free T4. Good. Now I will dictate. The patient is a 41 year old man with abdominal pain…”

Certainly we could have a long discussion about the difference in consumer technology and popular healthcare technology. However, I couldn’t help but wonder how many doctors have tried out Siri on their iPhone in order to get healthcare information. I bet this is pretty common. Although, I wonder how good the answers are that Siri gives.

If you’re a medical provider that’s used Siri for accessing health and medical information, I’d love to hear about your experience. I bet there are probably also a bunch of funny experiences trying to use Siri for medical info. I’d love to hear those as well.

Are there ways that “Siri” like technology could and should be implemented in EMR and EHR software?

Neil Versel wrote an interesting piece over on Fierce Mobile healthcare which talks about EMTs and hospitals using technology to facilitate better care for patients. Neil however argues (rightly so) that not many emergency physicians are going to make a diagnosis based on a grainy photo. Then, he goes on to talk about video. Here’s a small section of his article:

Now, imagine if doctors and nurses could provide real medical advice to help EMTs treat patients in transit based on high-quality, two-way live video. That’s exactly what they have been doing in Tucson, AZ, for nearly two years, thanks to a 227-square-mile Wi-Fi grid that covers most of the city. East Baton Rouge Parish, LA, which includes the city of Baton Rouge, recently launched a similar system that eventually will link to seven hospitals across the parish.

Tucson’s University Medical Center saves $5,000 each time it can prevent an unnecessary activation of a Level 1 trauma team and, more importantly, can save lives by providing remote diagnoses and triage and making sure the trauma team is ready while the patient is still in transit. I wrote about this technology in the May issue of Hospitals and Health Networks, but that short piece only tells part of the story.

I just love the fact that hospitals are looking at this. However, I couldn’t help but have my mind drift off into an EMR. I wonder if this same video technology won’t one day be introduced into an EMR. Only makes sense to me. Hard drives are getting bigger. Video technology is getting smaller. One day a doctor won’t need to chart at all. They’ll just have the full video.

Now we just have to ask ourselves if that’s a good or a bad thing for doctors.

UPDATE: I started thinking and seemed to remember having a similar idea before. I thought it was with recorded audio. I did some digging and sure enough back in March of 2006 I wrote about what could be a video EMR. Interesting to think how some things go full circle.