CAP TODAY Pathology/Laboratory Medicine/Laboratory Management
March 24, 2015—Researchers evaluated how well eight competing electronic health records systems met 11 objective criteria for optimal graphs of diagnostic test results, and found that none hit the mark on all measures. Among the problems: results graphed in reverse chronological order and misleading data plots. Only two of the EHRs allowed users to hover over or click on a data point to see the precise values of the x-y coordinates.
Many commercial EHRs have significant limitations in graphing capabilities of laboratory test results and often display results in nonstandardized fashion,” concluded the authors of the study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. “Suboptimal displays could have serious implications for clinical decision-making.” Read more.