With great IT tools, and easy to use EHR, the future of medical treatment may be semi-virtual. How do you, the doctor, feel about your doctors’ visits being conducted via sophisticated Skype? How do you , the doctor, feel about practicing medicine via the computer? You may be horrified, but we are there, and we should be grateful to be there. One day, soon, the face in the robot’s screen may be your own. Not only medical billing and record keeping, but examinations, too, will be done, in part, via a computer’s intervention. Make sure that when decide to buy or lease EMR software, you look at software that promises interoperability with other systems. Robust medical EMR software that can shake hands with other software, is a wise way to go when you are moving into the world medical IT.
I have had the privilege of watching a doctor examining his patients, seriously and carefully, via a very sophisticated and sensitive version of Skype. I have even listened to the jokes and the excellent bedside-manner while the bed is 1,000 miles away. To be sure, another doctor, PA, or nurse must have seen the patient before and will follow up in 3-dimensional life with a hands-on exam, but so much can be gotten from an examination like this when no doctor is present or available. In cases like this EMR / EHR are particularly valuable, because the examining doctor can have access to records, tests, medical history, and more. And he can inject his questions and concerns into the records, for the next physician to review and examine. It sure beats waiting forever for a doctor to show up in flesh and blood.
