A Farewell to Steve Jobs

As an Electronic Medical Record company, we strive to do our very best to improve the workflow of doctors.  This means helping with billing, scheduling, educating patients, making notations easier, making actions with minimal clicks, finding information on drug interactions, indications, and results faster; and making our product as simple and beautiful as possible.  There is no doubt we have this perspective largely from our own artistic personas — but, one man has always inspired each member of our team to perform at our very best.  This man is Steve Jobs.

When we started drchrono, we knew we wanted to deliver the best product to our physicians and customers.  How could we do this?  What physical hardware would be the most stable for a doctor?  The answer was the iPad.  Why?  The answer lies within Steve Jobs’ leadership and the Apple Teams’ insane dedication to creating the best product they can muster.  This is evident when you have Steve calling Vic Gundotra (a gentleman working within Google’s mobile application team, at the time) on Sunday asking him to speak about an urgent matter.  The matter was the color of the second “O” in Google’s logo not having the “right” yellow gradient on the iPhone.

When you have the CEO of one of the largest companies in the world calling about the gradient of an “O,” it’s evident that such a company is focused on the best user experience.  Apple doesn’t revolutionizing new features.  They’re rather about perfecting what they have.  They dazzle — taking today’s technology and building the best experience a user can see, hear, and touch.  The best functionality.  The most simple.  The highest level of elegance.  It’s about taking the paint in our palettes, and creating our Sistine Chapel.

We seek constant improvement.  We seek to continually iterate, change, grow, improve, enhance, minimize, until we are the best we can be — which we will never be.  It is the strive for perfection, with the understanding that we will never be perfect.  Through this, we will continually be making better and better products.  We will be continuing to make our products and services more valuable, with the lowest exertion of time and effort on our customers as possible.  This is what Steve Jobs has inspired within us.  And, it is for this reason, we bid a grand farewell and send our best to Apple’s CEO.

Thank you, Mr. Jobs!

Usability is the Most Important Factor for EHR Adoption

Why is anything successful? Because people like to use it. Usability drives the doctor to pick it up because they enjoy the interface. They enjoy how they are in the driver’s seat, and it’s why people generally enjoy driving a Porsche over a Ford Taurus.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter as much how important EHR’s are to improve health care delivery, or to list all of the benefits of electronic storage of health information. Rambling on about $44K stimulus packages, Obamacare, electronic prescribing, immunization registries, or medication reconciliation will only get you so far.

Health care professionals desire a new approach because they all know the one they’re using now isn’t quite cutting it. They are thirsty for something innovative, easy to use, and elegantly beautiful. Usability will drive EHR growth, leaving all others variables behind.

Case in point, Kalorama Information released a study March 1st, 2011, exploring the EHR world. EHR growth is expected to increase 15% per year until 2015. Kalorama Information found in their study that it’s the usability of the EHR that will be the ultimate deciding factor in the growth market for EHR’s.

Practice management is the second biggest segment, predicted to grow at nearly 11% per year until 2015.

Check out our elegant iPad-based user interface by signing up for a free account here. We offer your complete solution to managing an office while taking the best care of your patients.

Food Dyes Debate Draws On

This past week, an article was published in the New York Times entitled Artificial Dye Safe to Eat, Panel Says. In it, they argue that an expert panel has concluded that there is no proof that artificial food colorings cause hyperactivity in most children. This government panel further decided that there is no need for the foods to carry warning labels of potential to cause hyperactivity.

Curiously, 6 out of the 14 experts voted that a warning label was needed. This means that 43% of the panel found the evidence linking food coloring to ADHD alarming enough to suggest warning labels on all foods with artificial coloring.

I think it’s overwhelmingly premature to make such a bold statement as “Artificial Dye Safe to Eat” when only one expert could have tipped the balance to a 50-50 split decision.

EMR EHR FaceTime on iPad 2

This is an amazing customer unboxing of an iPad 2, check it out and get inspired about what we are going to be building in healthcare on this.

The iPad 2 will enable us to bring things like EHR FaceTime to healthcare.

With the launch of iPad 2, Apple has also enabled FaceTime for use with its new built in cameras. The iPad 2 has two cameras,
a front facing VGA camera and a 720P HD rear facing camera and both can be used with FaceTime.

FaceTime for iPad will allow you to make video calls to another iPad 2, iPhone 4, new iPod touch 4 or even to a Mac.

The possibilites are endless! drchrono

iPhone EHR Access

If you are a DrChrono subscriber and have an iPhone, download our iPhone app, it comes as part of the DrChrono service.

You can download the iPhone EHR app here.