Imagine a new U.S. federal law mandating that all physicians practicing in the U.S.A. must use DHS2004 form to document each encounter with their patients. How much inefficiency would this introduce into the medical workflow? Can a single form be optimal for all medical specialties and practice configurations? If not, how many forms will we need? Who should design and pick the forms to use? How do we maximize quality of care given the tremendous diversity of medical information needs? Every physician starts out as a highly qualified scientist, who is fully capable of organizing and acting on highly variable medical information. Before we deprive individual physicians of their discretion to customize their records, please consider one of the alternative solutions:
Introduction to OIO-1.0.0. Is OIO just marketing hype? Read on to find the answer to this and other questions.
- A: Yes, Nandalal Gunaratne, a urologist, trained many colleagues at the Sri Lanka Teaching Hospital, Colombo South to make forms.
- A: Yes, psychiatrists were able to learn to create forms using the OIO software during half-day courses at the American Psychiatric Association Annual meetings in 2001 and 2002.
- A: Yes, Alex Chelnokov (Orthopaedics) and Gary Kantor (Anesthesia) learned to make forms.
- A: When the OIO system exports a patient record, it uses a simple XML format to communicate the patient information. In addition, the form(s) are included together with the patient information. Upon receipt of an OIO-generated patient record, the destination system can reproduce the form to correctly display the content of the patient record.
- A: Just because physicians can make up their own forms does not mean they must. The OIO system enables physicians to exercise their professional judgement and decide, in the best interest of their patients, which/what forms are most appropriate. This means if there is a highly useful form for documenting severity of depression, for example, perhaps many psychiatrists will make use of it rather than making up their own. OIO software’s ability to support importing and sharing of forms makes it easy for physcians to download, try, and adopt other people’s forms. Centralized forms repositories like the OIO Library will make it easier to find and download forms.
- A: We are in the process of designing form-to-form translators that will support reporting and information aggregation functions. Please let us know if you like to work on this.
- A: Yes, post a comment below or send email to aho@ucla.edu or open-outcomes-general@lists.sourceforge.net
- A: By challenging us with your question(s), you become a contributor to the OIO Project. Therefore, please ask, especially if you disagree with our approach, claims, or conclusions. 🙂
- A: For a quick overview, take a look at the Introduction to OIO-1.0.0 article published on Zope.Org.