You Changed Doctors. What if Your Medical Records Didn’t?

WHETHER IT INVOLVES A STACK of paper or yet another internet portal, cue the déjà vu while answering the same medical history questions for seemingly the hundredth time for a new doctor.

Beyond the time suck, what does starting every medical relationship as essentially a blank slate to your provider mean for your health?

With support from a $1.4 million National Institutes of Health grant, Nate Apathy, assistant professor of health policy and management at the University of Maryland, is working with A. Jay Holmgren of the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine to find out.

They’re using machine learning and artificial intelligence tools to examine patients’ electronic health records and determine how doctors’ decision-making is shaped by seeing either limited data or “outside” data” (transferred from other medical offices), and how that affects patients.

“When health data travels seamlessly between institutions, there is immense promise to drive down health care costs and reduce health care use and duplicative paperwork, all of which can improve patient health and satisfaction,” Apathy says. “We hope this research and the open-source tools we will create from it will contribute to improved decision-making and health outcomes.”