Researchers: Health IT Creates Its Own 'Reality'

Clinicians need to be able to point out ambiguities, errors to developers

Electronic records create a third "reality" in healthcare--one beyond the patient's physical reality and the clinician's understanding of the issues and treatment--and yet another way to miscommunicate, according to a new study.

What if the physician could take a magic stylus and mark errors and ambiguities for developers to address? That would be an ideal scenario, according to research published online this week in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.