The role of electronic health records in the Ebola outbreak

The recent death of Thomas Duncan of the Ebola virus, the first in the nation, is raising questions about the role and efficacy of electronic health records.

The recent death of Thomas Duncan of the Ebola virus, the first in the nation, is raising questions about the role and efficacy of electronic health records. Before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Daniel Varga, the chief clinical officer at Texas Health Resources, said bad data in Duncan’s electronic health records led to his death and exposure of others to Ebola. Varga says two big communication problems led to that bad data: the first was his travel history wasn’t part of his admission process and secondly, the system wasn’t calibrated to look for potential Ebola risk factors in the follow up screening process. Varga says those problems are now fixed, but hospitals have to manually update their EHRs to do that, which could signal future problems.

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