Creating a New Model for Managing Medical Information

Denis Cortese, M.D.,
President and CEO of Mayo Clinic

By Denis Cortese, M.D.

Information technology has the potential to transform health care. The technology we're using today has made us more efficient. But we're only scratching the surface.

What we have in place today is an electronic medical record system that connects us to data, allows us to organize and view it in a way that works best for us. That's an important first step.

We're now working on a new set of technology initiatives that will allow us to integrate all of our patient records so that we can use that information to improve patient care and drive further research that will generate new knowledge. We will be able to sift through the records to find things like specific disease characteristics, genomic information and treatment outcomes. That will allow us to suggest the most effective treatments based on what we've learned from similar cases.

The goal is that we have all knowable information needed to make a decision about health care available to the physician and the patient at the push of a button.

Integrating Information

We're talking about a system that stores and connects all of a patient's medical information and history, physical examination, information about treatment options, information about medications and their interactions, images, genetic information, reference material, new studies — all of it integrated so that physicians and patients can access the same information, even in nontraditional settings.

All of that information will get digested in the computer to help create a more specific diagnosis. Beneath that, there will be another level of computation going on. It will answer questions like: What do we know about others with this kind of cancer? What are the proteins and genes involved, and what are the implications? What treatments are recommended? What studies are going on around the world?

That will be the true value of the electronic record. It's not just reproducing what's on paper. It's reproducing what's on paper, plus.

We Need a New Infrastructure

It's nothing new, really. All of the information — protocols, drug interactions, outcomes data, the latest research, clinical trials — is available today. It's just hard to get in a timely, efficient and reliable manner by the physician and the patient.

Our information systems can't do this now. We need the infrastructure to build upon, so we're working with IBM to create a system to store, collate and retrieve all of this information.

It's big. Can we do it? Yes. Are we doing it? Yes.

Freeing Physicians to Spend Time with Patients

We don't want to take the human moment out of patient care. We aren't a bunch of machines. Some people may worry that this type of system will take the art of medicine and human judgment out of medical practice. But really, it can free the physician to practice the art of medicine. Instead of spending all of our time tracking down information, we can quickly get all of the information available, and we can spend the time with patients to determine the best course for them.

This is essential as medicine grows increasingly complex. When we have all the information we need at our fingertips, we can use it to help answer the questions we need to answer, to make medical decisions, to give the patients all the information they need. Patients today want to know that their doctors have all of the available information related to their conditions.

Ideal: Everyone Connected

This isn't going to be an issue just for Mayo Clinic. We're the first medical center using the power of IBM's supercomputers to advance patient care and research in this way. And I think our experience will be a model for managing medical information.

We'll truly be moving forward in health care when we can share information and knowledge not just with other departments and organizations within our system, but share knowledge with other medial centers around the country and around the world. Most importantly, individual patients and their physicians will have electronic access to their own information, as well as access to reliable up-to-date knowledge about their conditions, wherever they are in the world.

(Originally published in October 2004)