As a nurse I have to agree with doc here. The key issue is that we rely on paper to communicate in a complex system involving dozens of people for any one patient admission. My patients continuously complain that docs, nurses, and techs keep asking the same questions over and over because nobody either has the chart or can read it. I think patients would be shocked to know how little is able to be communicated with paper. Getting good info a patient's history, meds, test results, MDs plan of care, nurses plans of care, etc. is nearly always incomplete with the paper system. We need an XML standard that can be shaped to the needs of different types of practice.

Every other business in the world uses computers to track its business. Healthcare has used it for the financial portion of the business but has been slow to track its most important function. Healthcare at its heart is information communication. You tell the doctor what is happening, he or she makes a diagnosis and a plan of care, others in the system help carry out that plan. Electronic health records aid that communication. They also facilitate the bigger job of analysis of patient problems, care, and outcomes with larger groups of patients. With a paper system it is nearly impossible to do a retrospective analysis of care. The issue of privacy is cited but the biggest issue for the general practitioner is cost. It can be hard to see a ROI in the short term for the large investment in hardware and software. We need flexible open source xml-type language that can be then used by developers to create applications that meet the needs of individual practitioners.