How to redesign the EMR user experience

Seattle Children's Hospital is testing a new kind of data aggregator that focuses more on the front-end user experience rather than the underlying technology to provide a more complete, accessible snapshot of a patient's condition and status. The technology is intended to foster patient-centric communication and ultimately allow clinicians to provide better, more coordinated care. "It's an incredible, new way to provide us with new ways of looking at information," Ari Pollack, MD, an informatics leader at the hospital, said of the Seattle Children's Patient Information System, a custom-built, Web-based program that pulls data from electronic medical records and other information systems, then presents a variety of user-friendly snapshots of patients. "EMRs are becoming increasingly more complex in terms of information going in," Pollack explained to InformationWeek Healthcare.