Dr. Stephen Downs, Director of Children’s Health Services Research at Indiana University School of Medicine and a research scientist at the Regenstrief Institute, both in Indianapolis, said, “I can’t agree more that the current design of most EHRs is not very pediatric friendly.”
“There are at least a couple of EHRs that cater specifically to pediatricians,” he said in an email to Reuters Health. “The vast majority don’t because there is not nearly as much money in pediatrics as in adult medicine.”
“Notable shortcomings are the lack of age-based norms for blood pressures or for dosing schedules where the amount of medication depends on the size – and occasionally age – of the child,” said Dr. Downs, who was not involved in developing the priority list but is familiar with the project.
“This has been a long-term effort,” he said. “The initial project produced a very complex set of standards that were really impractical to implement. The paper talks about a much simplified and high-priority set of requirements.”
“Personally, I think this is a very good subset,” Dr. Downs said. “If EHRs could implement all of them, that would be terrific.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2twRssA
Reference
- Wald J, Haque S, Rizk S, et al. Enhancing Health IT Functionality for Children: The 2015 Children’s EHR Format. Pediatrics. 2018 March 8. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2018/03/06/peds.2016-3894.
