Think tank touts portable EMRs for patients

The Jackson Hole Group proposes that the exchange of medical information via a two-way electronic pathway between physicians and patients would improve health care quality.

By Tyler Chin, AMNews staff. Nov. 11, 2002.

The way to improve health care and lower costs is to redesign the system around the patients, physicians and other professionals who use information technologies, according to a new proposal from the Jackson Hole Group.

The proposal, called Heroic Pathways, revolves around two elements. The first is a voluntary system of portable personal EMRs that would be owned and controlled by patients, who could carry the records to any doctor or hospital, said Paul Ellwood, MD, founder of the Jackson Hole Group, an informal but influential group of physicians, academics and industry executives who help shape health system debate.

Second, patients would arrange for a physician or medical group to exchange information and relevant medical advice via a two-way electronic "health information pathway," said Dr. Ellwood, a pediatrician and neurologist. Using the pathway, for example, patients and physicians would be able to access decision-support software tools or information on evidence-based medicine and could also measure quality and outcomes. Doctors could transmit alerts about drug recalls, send appointment reminders or ask patients if their treatment was effective, he added.

"The whole idea is to create an information highway, if you will, between the patient and the doctor that is buttressed by an abundance of information about the patient's medical history so that no one has to search through a piece of paper to find that out," Dr. Ellwood said. [...]