Electronic medical records represent a significant shift in ophthalmic practice operations. Here, as part of the celebration of innovation for the 30th anniversary of Ophthalmology Management, Jane T. Shuman, president of Eyetechs and editorial board member for Ophthalmology Management, highlights how EMRs were once intimidating yet have now become standard across over 50% of practices nationwide. The below transcript has been edited for clarity.
I'm Jane Shuman. I'm president of Eyetechs. We are a company that trains technicians and evaluates clinical flow. I am here today to talk to you about electronic medical records. As someone who began scribing on paper, EMRs have changed the face of ophthalmology and the complete workflow. It is probably the most transitional event that we have had in over 35 years of my practice. The electronic record was and still is very intimidating, but a very necessary part of workflow today. When many people that are no longer in the industry first had to transfer their written skills to electronic records, some of them even needed typing lessons. This is how different it was at the time it was first introduced to today when over 50% of practices in the country are on EMR. The next major transition is going to be artificial intelligence, and yet we are left to see how that is actually going to impact our work.