Wachter Meet Jay
Bob Wachter, MD is a blogger who also happens to have a day job as both Professor and Associate Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (he also holds a couple other "Chief" positions around UCSF but I can only fit so many words into this post).
Jay Parkinson, MD is also a blogger who has a day job as both the "IM Doctor" and CMO at Myca. He is also planning to cause some major ripples in the healthcare industry in a couple of months with his new project.
I think they should meet each other.
Consider this an introduction.
They probably don't need an introduction from me given the impressive connectivity that blogospheres have around certain niche topics (I'm sure they've already run into each others' blogs).
I was reading Wachter's very interesting and surprisingly frank blog the other day and I came across this recent post that details his observations of spending two weeks doing clinical medicine "on the wards" (he says he does this "sporadically" and it leaves him "well positioned to notice changes in clinical care").
His post goes on to explain the current IT environment at UCSF and also provides some "thoughts on information technology and its impact on day-to-day hospital care."
Here are some good tidbits from the post:
We don’t yet have Computerized Provider Order Entry (it’s been coming “next year” for the past 5 years), but we do have an increasingly functional Electronic Medical Record (our vendor is GE, which bought the foundering IDX company a few years ago). Our EMR contains all physician and nursing notes, as well as vital signs, labs, and x-rays.
Talking about his Internet-based template system called "Note Writer" for tracking and updating patient progress notes:
More impressively, yesterday I absently wrote, “patient received 4 U PRBCs” (packed red blood cells). The computer, remembering that “U” is a Joint Commission “high risk abbreviation,” balked, helpfully suggesting that I convert “U” to “units.” I simply clicked “OK” and – voila – the substitution was done.
After I expressed my awe, a resident sitting next to me asked a great question. “I can understand why a handwritten “U” would be a risky abbreviation,” he said. (He is right; there have been dozens of deaths when an order “Give 10U Insulin” was mistaken for “Give 100 Insulin.”) “But why would it be dangerous on the computer?”
Here is the paragraph from his post that really grabbed me:
My weasely answer: “For now, we’re in this half-way world between paper and computers, and there is no way that either we or the regulators will be able to manage separate rules for each. So, even though it seems silly to flag “U” and “MSO4” on the computer, I can’t see a way around this.” He nodded the nod of someone thinking “another moronic rule” and went back to his notes.
"We're in this half-way world between paper and computers..."
Whoa. What an inconvenient truth. 
Ok, now switch over to the world of Jay.
I've been closely following his Tumblr blog for some time now trying to decipher cryptic messages about this new project and also because he shines plenty of light on particular problems with our current healthcare industry (the same industry that he thinks he's going to provide some solutions for in a couple of months).
The other day he posted this not-so-cryptic tidbit about his new project:
It’s going to be an interesting ride. For a less cryptic explanation of one of my projects I’ve started in the past few weeks…we’re developing an interface for a physician to access a person’s entire medical chart (for example, 80 years worth of every bit of text, radiology, labs, etc, in an individual’s chart) in one screen. But most importantly, all information is displayed in context…the interface shows data, not as individual points of data sectioned off by “Labs,” “Radiology,” etc, but as data that’s all interrelated and visually put in any context a physician wants to view. If you’d like to see the prototype, head out to the Health 2.0 conference in San Diego in March. If you’d like to see the real thing, head out to Williamsburg in 4 months.
Accompanied by this mind-blowing, jaw-dropping demo video (you really need to see this):
For those of you reading this in a feed reader or by email, the video is a TED demo for Photosynth an amazing technology that "creates breathtaking multidimensional spaces with zoom and navigation features that outstrip all expectation." (See the video here.)
Seriously, it will revolutionize how visuals are browsed, navigated and connected. I can see it having major effects on Internet browsing and it will especially make mobile devices like iPhones so much more usable for real Internet browsing.
Why did I want Wachter to meet Jay?
Because some really cool technology will be making it to the "wards" soon enough. Technology that will vastly improve clinical medicine and patient care.
It will start with Jay in New York. And, it will slowly make its way around the healthcare industry and eventually show up at Wachter's doorstep at UCSF.
Probably sooner than later since UCSF is ahead of the curve. I think.
Than Wachter will really be able to impress the resident sitting next to him.
Read Wachter's fantastic blog here and Jay's cryptic-yet-highly-interesting blog here.
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All through my childhood, teen years and, now, young adult years I've gone to my doctor's office for yearly checkups, physicals and random things that... - What Is Dr. Jay Parkinson Up To??? (Update: Check His Blog)
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I pretend to have a real job, by which I mean I started my own company. 
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