Thursday, December 15, 2011

Metadata, anyone?

Nick Genes (founder of Grand Rounds) has a very interesting piece on a potentially dangerous consequence of Electronic Medical Records (EMR):

"Metadata standards for health information exchange are being debated in DC; eventually even discrete bits of health data such as medication lists will have metadata tags associated with them, distinguishing between, for instance, admission medication lists and discharge medication lists."

So what is "metadata?" Basically, it's all the little changes and notations that aren't visible when reading a document, but are contained in the file itself. This could include deletions, additions, redactions, you name it.

If you're a patient or an insured (or know one or the other), you need to read the whole thing.
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