Opinion: Unlocking the promise of learning from everyone with cancer
Locked behind the firewalls of proprietary systems sits a treasure trove of data that could help diagnose heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and other conditions faster and more accurately and better treat people with them. But there it sits, largely untapped, because the electronic health record infrastructure was never designed to let organizations easily share data.
Electronic health records were first developed in the 1960s but didn’t become mainstream until about 12 years ago when the federal government provided incentives for their use. At the time, expectations were high that they would be the solution for seamlessly and securely collecting and sharing valuable patient data. EHRs would reduce the need for faxing records from one doctor’s office to another and end the practice of manually inputting the same information into multiple databases.
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