Software for Google Glass allows for first 'wearable record'

drchrono, the creator of a free EHR platform on the iPad, iPhone and cloud, has created the first “wearable health record.”

The company has integrated Google Glass into its EHR, creating a total mobile wearable medical experience for physicians. Users can look at medical records, videos and pictures hands free.

drchrono has been slowly releasing the tool to physicians over the past few months. About 300 doctors requested access, said Daniel Kivatinos, co-founder and COO, in an interview with Clinical Innovation + Technology. Each physician requires about one hour of configuration and training.

The company’s mindset has been to allow people to use their software for free and over time expand the relationship, he said. drchrono has close to 60,000 registered physicians and many upgrade to become paid users. The large EHR vendors, he noted, charge large installation fees and do not allow anyone to use their software for free. Kivatinos compared his company’s software to gmail in which users can start using the software, get comfortable and upgrade later if they choose to.

As physicians have been using the software, Kivatinos said they have been providing information the company did not already know. For example, a surgeon said he often wants to document during a procedure but to do so, he used to have to remove his surgical gloves, take high-quality photographs and input documentation and then decontaminate again and put on new gloves. The ability to use Google Glass hands free is “huge. It saves time and it saves stress.”

Another physician looks forward to the ability to speaking a specific word or phrase as a sort of “macro” to input certain blocks of documentation. Also, speaking certain terms could aid in triggering other things to happen. For example, a clinician could want to attach video tags to a certain type of procedure. So, he or she could say, “Ok Google Glass, 1126” to indicate information about a standard check-up.

“Physicians want to see certain data in near real-time,” said Kivatinos. The software serves as a “backseat driver” to put information into the record. “It’s like someone is sitting there on the other side streaming video and putting information into the Glass.”

“This is a game changing device; I am amazed at how well drchrono and Glass helps the documentation process during patient encounters. It’s a big time saver,” said Bill Metaxas, DPM, who has been using drchrono and Glass in his San Francisco practice. "I can see Glass becoming an integral part of the norm in a physician’s workflow.”

In its current iteration, Kivatinos said the tool is a “good consumption device with some data there but we want to enhance it even more.”

The “wearable record” term came directly from the drchrono team, said Kivatinos. “We’ve always thought of ourselves as a mobile medical records company. Docs have iPhone and iPads so it only makes sense that the future of healthcare is wearing your medical record.”

He said the future is wide open. “Glass is very new so I’m sure some really interesting use cases are going to come out of it and the way that we’re using it.”