Medical Device Makers Still Working to Connect With EMRs

Right now, only a small percentage of hospitals are collecting data from medical devices in real time. That’s partly because hospitals have other technical challenges to handle first (including the development of interfaces between major enterprise systems), and partly because device makers aren’t offering easy connectivity options.

But providers are prodding medical device makers — hard — to offer device-to-EMR links. As medical connectivity consultant Tim Gee notes, it’s kind of a no-brainer at this point. ”What’s the use of automating the EMR if users have to write down numbers read from medical device displays and then manually type them into the EMR?” Gee asks, sensibly enough.

Unfortunately for hospital IT managers, the situation hasn’t gotten much better since my colleague Katherine Rourke shared Gee’s impressions last April. Let’s start with the ugly conclusions. From what Gee says, exporting medical device data to an EMR is a complicated mess, and neither vendors nor hospitals are likely to solve this problem anytime soon...