Another challenge for EHRs

I have more confidence in Google's attitude to Electronic Health Records than the current National Program for IT, and the major factor in this is openness. (NB this doesn't mean I don't have any worries about Google doing it, just that they appear to be doing it better than the DoH)

Google addresses an interesting problem with user access to EHRs. A US hospital was sending ICD-9 diagnoses direct into a patient's EHR. Guess what? The coded diagnoses were often nonsense, as they were either a 'best fit' or a rule-out diagnosis (eg the hospital codes and bills for Acute Coronary Syndrome when the patient is admitted with ?ACS, but turns out to be troponin negative)

The US is ahead of us with this because they've been relying on coding for payment for years (indeed coders can be found wandering the corridors of US hospitals scouring for billable events or diagnoses). But in this case, the user reviewed his own record, noted the appearance of some odd diagnoses, and took it up with Google. Now both google and the hospital have changed how they work.

Web2 may be about the power of crowds but it's nice to see a single person's issues being dealt with by the Google behemoth.

If the NPfIT wasn't a political football, a privacy concern, grossly overbudget and poorly designed from the ground up, maybe there wouldn't be so much secrecy about how it's going to work, and more user involvement to iron out its creases.