By RICK WEINHAUS, MD

Below is a slightly expanded version of a letter I recently sent to Dr. Blumenthal, the new National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, and the members of the new national HIT Policy Committee.

Dear Dr. Blumenthal:

I am writing to you on the need for user-friendly electronic health record (EHR) software programs.  As a practicing physician with first-hand experience with hard-to-use CCHIT-certified EHR software, I would like to share with you a solution to this vital issue.

The CCHIT model for EHR software certification is fatally flawed because it mandates hundreds of required features and functions, which take precedence over good software design.  This flawed CCHIT model takes valuable physician time and effort away from patient care and leads to increased potential for errors, omissions, and mistakes.

As a clinician, I have had first-hand experience with a top-tier CCHIT-certified EHR.  Despite being computer literate and being highly motivated, after a year and a half of concerted effort, I still cannot effectively use this CCHIT-certified program.  The poorly designed software constantly intrudes on my clinical thought process and interferes with my ability to focus on the needs of my patients.

Just this year the National Research Council report on health care IT came to a similar conclusion. The report found that currently implemented health care IT programs often

provide little support for the cognitive tasks of the clinicians or the workflow of the people who must actually use the system.  Moreover, these applications do not take advantage of human-computer interaction [HCI] principles, leading to poor designs that can increase the chance of error, add to rather than reduce work, and compound the frustrations of executing required tasks.

Our health care system needs user-friendly EHR software, firmly grounded on what we have learned about how the human brain takes in, organizes, and processes information.

As an example of software based on usability principles, I would like to share with you a new design, the EHR TimeBar, which is one example of user-friendly EHR software design that can dramatically improve patient care.  Please see attached figure and description at the end of this letter.

I have no financial interest in this software design. My goal is to promote the emergence of user-friendly EHR technology that will improve the day-to-day lives of my colleagues and help us take better care of our patients.

We absolutely need standards for data, data transmission, interoperability, and privacy. There is no need, however, to specify the internal workings of EHR software. To do so will stifle innovative software designs that could improve our health care system. If CCHIT is allowed to mandate the meaning of the term “certified-EHR,” the $17 billion allocated for EHR adoption and use will largely be wasted.

The solution is to keep EHR certification rules simple to encourage an open market model. An open market will foster a competitive environment, leading to the emergence of user-friendly EHR software that is simple, helpful, efficient, and inexpensive – software that will improve both patient care and the day-to-day lives of our clinicians.

I appreciate your work and the work of the HIT Policy Committee members in crafting our new national health care IT plan.

Sincerely yours,

Richard Weinhaus, M.D.