New Orleans-based Ochsner Health System has announced it is the first to fully integrate Apple's new mobile health platform with its Epic EHR system.
On Sunday, the health system successfully imported the first patient's HealthKit data directly into the Epic record.
"In the past, we relied on patients to log information, bring it to us and then we would input the data and decide a course of action," said Robert Bober, MD, director of cardiac molecular imaging at Ochsner Medical Center in Jefferson, La. "Now we can share information seamlessly between patient and physician to allow real-time, accurate analysis of a patient's health status. This is ideal for patients with chronic diseases such as heart failure, hypertension and diabetes."
Ochsner Health System is not the only organization incorporating HealthKit in patient care. Pilot programs at Stanford (Calif.) Children's Health and Duke Medicine in Durham, N.C., are using HealthKit to monitor patients with chronic conditions. Additionally, Cerner and athenahealth are working with Apple to allow their clients to receive patient information in their EHR systems as well.
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How Cerner will integrate with HealthKit