The National Cancer Institute announced it will offer a specialized, lightweight electronic health record for cancer patients. Healthcare organizations can and often do customize the EHRs they implement to suit their clinicians' workflow and to capture data that they deem relevant. But there's a need for further EHR customization for specialties, such as behavioral health, and diseases.
Whether there is a significant enough market for EHR vendors to deliver the goods is a relevant question, but if organizations such as NCI step up to the plate and create a lightweight EHR, all the better. They have the expertise and know what data needs to be captured by cancer specialists. It makes sense, too, that NCI is using a standards-based EHR. The fact that it is an open-source application is even better. That way, specialized organizations can collaborate with open-source developers. Open source is gaining greater traction in the EHR market.
It's also smart that NCI is thinking of the patient (of course, with the trend toward a patient-centered healthcare delivery) by eventually making its lightweight EHR application available to patients. With many chronic diseases, patients have to be proactive about self-care, and having an EHR specific to their disease should make self-care easier to accomplish and treatment plans easier to follow.
Perhaps NCI will be the forerunner of other organizations that team up with health IT vendors to create an application specific to specialties and diseases. If anyone knows of projects out there, let us know. This is something worth tracking.
