from Hacker News

Designing a New Electronic Medical Record

by samratjp on 11/13/12, 8:27 PM with 19 comments

  • by ilaksh on 11/14/12, 12:37 AM

    Since this is going on github, why not expand it a bit to allow people to submit things like stylesheets for different types of media/screen sizes or even JavaScript code for formatting the CCD XML format or maybe doing different internationalization formats? Anyway the next step after the design is for everyone to try to code the same design, so might as well at least be open to that part of it.

    I don't really have time but if I wanted my submission to be considered I would try to cheat that way by creating working JavaScript code that processed XML and spit out different formatted versions for phones vs. larger screens and also different languages.

  • by rdl on 11/14/12, 4:07 AM

    Not at all surprised the VA is involved in something like this -- they are one of the best large EMR/EHR deployments in government and a great system by commercial standards too. They seem to be a decade or two ahead of the active duty military medical system on this. (VistA vs. AHLTA).

    There's a new effort to merge both systems onto a new one called OSEHRA (Open Source ...), which should be interesting, but I hope it looks more like VistA and less like AHLTA. I suspect MEDCOM is more powerful politically than the VA, though.

  • by famousactress on 11/14/12, 1:20 AM

    Please forgive the semi-shameless plug, but if you're into this we're a team that thinks about this full time, and we're hiring! We're a small startup rethinking the way patients and their caregivers interact with data. Check us out at http://elationemr.com

  • by kodisha on 11/14/12, 12:58 AM

    looked up a bit for existing records, and required fields and there is no placeholder for genetics data.

    Maybe I'm wrong, or I'm overseeing something but I think that "Patient has inherited malicious BRCA1 mutation" information should be IN patients medical record.

  • by GiraffeNecktie on 11/14/12, 1:05 PM

    They're dedicating a whole $25k for this project. As a prize? Surely the government should be engaging a good UX design shop and spending a reasonable sum of money for a complete design and implementation cycle including user testing.

  • by kyro on 11/14/12, 12:05 AM

    This is right up my freakin' alley. Awesome.

  • by rjzzleep on 11/14/12, 2:46 AM

    when you're saying design, you don't mean the actually restructuring, but just the way it's represented correct? so whatever is in the txt stays in the txt

  • by codegeek on 11/13/12, 11:03 PM

    great. Just signed up.