Do we really know the true benefits of EMR or can we not find them out until we have them implemented?

This is a question which has been on my mind a lot lately as I’ve been reading and writing about Obama and EMR.  There have been so many different studies describing the effectiveness of electronic medical records.  Some show the amazing benefits of an EMR.  Others have shown that electronic medical records aren’t everything we hoped they’d be.

As I think about these two differing opinions, I can’t help but think that we probably don’t know the benefits that can come from having broad EMR adoption.

Certainly many studies and those interested in EMR have evaluated the fiscal and clinical benefits of an EMR.  I just can’t help but wonder if we won’t be able to understand and measure the benefits of EMR until broad EMR adoption occurs.

Just think of a few simple things we could do so much better with aggregating EMR data:

• Disease Tracking and Outbreaks
• Drug Effectiveness
• Drug Side Effects
• Health Trends
• Detialed Past Family/Medical History

I’m sure this list is inadequate in expressing my feeling that a broad adoption of EMR will open up a world of data that was previously stuck in the depths of a paper chart.

I was reading the Healthcare IT guy’s blog and saw a post about a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Healthcare IT conference going on in Houston July 31, 2009 – August 2, 2009. According to Shahid, one of the most outspoken proponents of FOSS in Healthcare, Fred Trotter, is one of the people behind the unconference.

I’m not sure why they chose Houston for this conference. I think Las Vegas would have been a much better choice, but yes I am completely biased because I live in Las Vegas. All of that said, I love what Fred Trotter is trying to do and so I’m excited to promote those who are pushing for free emr and open source emr (see also our Open Source and Free EMR list on our wiki).

You can go and register for the event at the incredibly reasonable rate of $60 if you do it before March 1.

My hope is that Fred also embraces some great streaming video technology such as UStream and makes the conference proceedings available to those of us that can’t make it to Houston. I know I’d tune in and I’d even be willing to embed the UStream video on this blog for others to attend as well. Only challenge might be the fact that it’s an unconference. Not sure the format they’ll be using and if that will translate well to video.