Difference between revisions of "Akron Children's Hospital and IBM"

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'''Akron Children's Hospital''' and IBM in 1966 started a “joint study” to determine if it was possible to eliminate the paperwork or at least part of the paperwork which has burdened the nurses and doctors in hospitals for many years.I stumbled across this unique video account of what possibly could be one of the first concerted efforts to use technology to increase efficiencies and reduce costs in healthcare delivery. It is a fascinating account of a joint study conducted in 1961 by IBM and Akron General Hospital. The video is only a little over two minutes long and it is worth watching in its entirety, although the ending calls for your special attention. It feels almost surreal that 50 years ago the US healthcare industry started its attempts to use technology to address the same issues that we are still trying to address today: become more efficient, reduce costs and improve patient care;especially like the ending where Mr. Sherman from Akron proudly announces that they can now see "certain advantages taking place," that "it is going to be possible to relieve the doctors and nurses of some of their paperwork," that "it is going to be possible to have correlation of diseases which we have not had before." In this short [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-aiKlIc6uk video] then hospital president Roger J. Sherman introduces the system, giving a brief insight into how the system worked. One aspect of the very forward-thinking portrayed in this video, made in 1966, is that the nurse on the floor was reminded by the computer system when a medication was due for one of her patients, including the drug name and dosage. The conclusion reached in the video was that paperwork can be reduced, disease "correlation" can be performed, and errors reduced.
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'''Akron Children's Hospital''' and IBM in 1961 conducted a joint study to examine the viability of eliminating some or all of the paperwork that has burdened hospital personnel for many years. The study resulted in an initiative, announced on Feb. 18, 1962, to address many of the same issues which health information technology strives to solve today: becoming more efficient, reducing costs and improving patient care. Two years into the effort, Roger Sherman, the hospital's administrator at the time, heralded developments such as drug dosage monitoring and harmful drug interaction alerts, both of which he said had improved quality of care, and the ability to track disease correlation [5].  The system also allowed users to easily view lab results on terminals.  
  
== Introduction ==
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The effort is sometimes neglected when the history of the development of electronic medical records is discussed. A 1966 film on the use of computers in healthcare features Roger Sherman showcasing the system [5] [6]. The project is also discussed in Melville H. Hodge’s 1978 book titled Medical Information Systems: A Resource for Hospitals, and a 2004 brochure titled Reducing Medical Errors: IT Helps Secure the Patient Safety Net [3].
 
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Roger J. Sherman, the narrator of the above video, and former Children’s Hospital president died on May 18, 2011 at the age of 96. His obituary [http://www.ohio.com/news/former-children-s-hospital-president-roger-j-sherman-dies-at-96-1.204864] was published on The Akron Beacon Journal’s web site (www.Ohio.com Akron), and contained the following:
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* Long before anyone was using computers, way back in the 1960s, Roger had the foresight to see computers had their advantages, ...
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* With an IBM grant, he introduced computers to the hospital. He used them to display lab results on each floor so that people didn't have to call down to the lab to get the information.
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* The hospital's auditorium bears his name.
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Akron Children’s Hospital, during the time period of this study, is one of the hospitals listed in Melville H. Hodge’s 1978 book titled Medical Information Systems: A Resource for Hospitals. The book states, “… in the early 1960s, a small group of hospitals became identified with one common goal, that of a commitment to serve as a site for the development of computerized handling of patient information.”
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The hospital and IBM are also referred, during the same time period, in a brochure titled Reducing Medical Errors: IT Helps Secure the Patient Safety Net [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15179735], published by The McGraw-Hill Companies in 2004. It includes Children’s Hospital in a Safety First time line and states that in “1965: Children’s Hospital, Akron, Ohio, installs IBM model 1620 with 1710 process control system (shown in 1966 photo- graph at left) and keys for order entry, admissions, nutrition services and census information.
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== References ==
 
== References ==
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# http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15179735
 
# http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15179735
 
# http://www.navinet.net/blog/1961-year-electronic-health-record‎
 
# http://www.navinet.net/blog/1961-year-electronic-health-record‎
 
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# http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/17/the-miracle-of-digital-health-records-50-years-ago/
 
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# http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-aiKlIc6uk
  
 
[[Category: EHR]]
 
[[Category: EHR]]
 
[[Category: UT-SHIS SP09]]
 
[[Category: UT-SHIS SP09]]

Revision as of 19:05, 7 September 2013

Akron Children's Hospital and IBM in 1961 conducted a joint study to examine the viability of eliminating some or all of the paperwork that has burdened hospital personnel for many years. The study resulted in an initiative, announced on Feb. 18, 1962, to address many of the same issues which health information technology strives to solve today: becoming more efficient, reducing costs and improving patient care. Two years into the effort, Roger Sherman, the hospital's administrator at the time, heralded developments such as drug dosage monitoring and harmful drug interaction alerts, both of which he said had improved quality of care, and the ability to track disease correlation [5]. The system also allowed users to easily view lab results on terminals.

The effort is sometimes neglected when the history of the development of electronic medical records is discussed. A 1966 film on the use of computers in healthcare features Roger Sherman showcasing the system [5] [6]. The project is also discussed in Melville H. Hodge’s 1978 book titled Medical Information Systems: A Resource for Hospitals, and a 2004 brochure titled Reducing Medical Errors: IT Helps Secure the Patient Safety Net [3].

References

  1. https://www.akronchildrens.org/cms/home/index.html
  2. http://www.ibm.com/us/en/
  3. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15179735
  4. http://www.navinet.net/blog/1961-year-electronic-health-record‎
  5. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/17/the-miracle-of-digital-health-records-50-years-ago/
  6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-aiKlIc6uk