Welcome to EMR and HIPAA

Sure, Dragon Naturally Speaking is amazing voice recognition software and very useful to an EMR. Biometrics is great for security and speed of access. Facial recognition still utterly amazes me. However, they all pale in comparison to this possible development:

The Berlin Brain-Computer Interface (BBCI) – dubbed the “mental typewriter” – was created by researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin and Charité, the medical school of Berlin Humboldt University in Germany. It was shown off at the CeBit electronics fair in Hanover, Germany.

The machine makes it possible to type messages onto a computer screen by mentally controlling the movement of a cursor. A user must wear a cap containing electrodes that measure electrical activity inside the brain, known as an electroencephalogram (EEG) signal, and imagine moving their left or right arm in order to manoeuvre the cursor around.

“It’s a very strange sensation,” says Gabriel Curio at Charité. “And you can understand from the crowds watching that the potential is huge.”

“Mental Typewriter controlled by thought alone”

How amazing would it be for your thoughts to automatically get inputted into an EMR? This invention would not only revolutionize EMR, but just about everything we do. We really have no idea what new technology is going to be here 20-30 years down the road. Get in! Buckle Up and get ready for the ride. This technology is crazy!!

Looking over the search terms that have been used to find my site I’ve often been surprised by how many people are interested in my Google Portal for Medical Information. Well, I found some more information on Google looking at doing more with medical information.
Garrett posted on Googling Google about “Google Health What is it?” In it he makes a good point about why would google hire a “Architect, Google Health” if it wasn’t planning to do something nice for health? Well, the real question is what will Google come up this time in the healthcare arena?

eHealth offers some good ideas about Google Health being a mix of a “custom medical search, Google News, list of health search engines, video search, search local to find a doctor, Google scholar for medicine, etc.”, but it also says, “that would underestimate Google’s potential for innovation.”

This really should be interesting to see how google compares to other health search portals like Kosmix.com and the infamous WebMD.

Will this really affect an EMR? Probably not. It might be a nice reference, but it’s going to be quite a while until any portal is good enough to integrate with an EMR program.