EHR Interface Drag-and-Drop Highlighting for Physician Attention
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current systems and methods for directing a physician's attention to noteworthy medical information in electronic health records (EHRs) often fail due to lost or unnoticed notes, leading to potential poor healthcare outcomes.
Innovation Solution
A graphical user interface (GUI) with a drag and drop paradigm allows medical assistants to mark specific data for later review by associating a datum alert, which is then highlighted for the physician's attention, reducing the burden on clinicians and ensuring important information is seen without requiring intervention from others.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If notes are written on patient charts or communicated verbally to convey noteworthy information, then the medical assistant or nurse attempts to direct physician attention, but the notes get lost or go unnoticed leading to communications failure
Solution Approach 1:
The system provides feedback to the physician through highlighted notes and alerts within the EHR interface, ensuring that noteworthy information is not only transmitted but also successfully received and noticed by the physician during their review of patient records
Solution Approach 2:
The EHR system serves as an intermediary between the medical assistant/nurse and the physician, providing a structured digital platform that reliably transmits and highlights noteworthy information, eliminating the failures of paper-based or verbal communication
2Productivity
If doctors spend time looking through notes and clicking around the interface to find important information, then they can review patient data, but this increases time consumption and does not ensure important information is seen
Solution Approach 1:
The medical assistant or nurse performs preliminary action by marking noteworthy information as 'noteworthy' before the physician reviews the record, ensuring that when the physician accesses the EHR, the important information is already highlighted and ready for immediate attention, eliminating the need for the physician to search through unmarked notes
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses visual highlighting and color changes in the EHR interface to mark noteworthy information, making it visually distinct from regular text and ensuring that the physician's attention is immediately drawn to critical information without requiring additional time for searching
3Quantity of substance
If the EHR presents all patient data, then complete information is available, but the physician cannot easily identify which information requires attention
Solution Approach 1:
The EHR interface segments the large volume of patient data into two categories: noteworthy information that is highlighted and requires attention, and routine information that can be reviewed at the physician's convenience. This segmentation allows the physician to quickly identify and address critical issues without being overwhelmed by the complete data set
Data Source
AI summary
Electronic messages, such as emails, often ask questions, ask that a task be done, or assign a task. The responsive messages often forget to answer the questions and the responders often forget to calendar tasks. Advances in natural language processing provide computers the ability to notice the questions and task requests/assignments. Automated analysis of the messages can detect and highlight questions, can provide for draft responses addressing every question, and can provide for getting tasks calendared.