Hi All,
The following are general comments extracted from a private email.
"...
Genomics, environment (e.g., stress, toxics), family, ancestors, diet, gerontology are a
few of the contributors to age-sensitive Healthcare issues. Perhaps the most potent
influence comes from the mind itself, e.g., all women in a family tree die at age 62.
An Electronic Healthcare Record must accurately and precisely capture all relevant,
pertinent information because the next Practitioner may find something in the record
that is significant. Practitioners are not 'filters' for the purpose of the EHRs.
Ongoing research and projects addressing age-related Healthcare issues will be
adding new technologies in a short period of time, very short for some Patients.
EHRs must accomodate these new technologies as they become available. Unless
they do new technology EHRs will be designed to keep pace.
Regardless of the EHR format Practitioners should be able to derive from the record
pertinent age-related information sufficient for their purposes. What is important is that
all Practitioners, regardless of their speciality and/or interest, can derive from the record
'pertinent age-related information'. This extends to non-medical Practitioners.
The Patient, as a valuable source of information, should have the ability to import
'age-related information' into the EHR. Three reasons come to mind: (1)family,
(2)past age-related information and (3)concerns regarding age-related Healthcare issues.
As we head toward Patient-Centric Healthcare, e.g., Personalized Drugs, 'age' as a
single variable field in a structured database record doesn't seem capable of
adopting to future changes.
..."
A downside to highly-structured database formats is that they are hard to change later.
Flexability is usually a good idea.
Regards!
-Thomas Clark