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FacebookA year ago January, I wrote a story for Spectrum on the work researchers at IBMâ¿¿s Zurich Research Lab were doing in visualizing electronic health records (EHR) using an approach which they termed as "Google-Earth for the Body."
At the time, the IBM researchers had demonstrated a prototype system to allow doctors to view their patientsâ¿¿ EHRs using three-dimensional images of the human body. Called the Anatomic and Symbolic Mapper Engine, the system maps the information in a patientâ¿¿s EHR to a 3-D image of the human body. A doctor first clicks the computer mouse on a particular part of the image, which triggers a search of the patientâ¿¿s EHR to retrieve the relevant information. The patientâ¿¿s information corresponding to that part of the image is then displayed, including text entries, lab results, and medical images, such as magnetic resource imaging. The doctor can zoom in on the image to retrieve selective information or narrow the search parameters by time or other factors.
The technology looked promising, but there was some concern expressed by several doctors that I interviewed during the background research for my story about how well an EHR visualization system would actually work in practice, or even if it was necessary.
The IBM research team, led by Dr. Andre Elisseeff, spent most of last year finding out by putting their system to the test at Thy-Mors Hospital in northern Denmark where it was used with very little front end training by both doctors and nurses. According to an IBM press release today, as well as a long conversation I had with Dr. Elisseeff last week, things went very well.
So well in fact that the IBM researchers involved have spun off a new company, Nhumi Technologies, that will be collaborating with IBM in the commercialization of the technology.
I will be writing more about my conversation with Dr. Elisseeff and Dr. Ulf Nielsen, Nhumi Technologies's CEO and CTO respectively, in the very near future. What they learned during their pilot has some interesting implications for the US national EHR effort.
