Study: 1 in 5 patients have medical records the length of ‘Moby Dick’

(WIFR) - A study from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health finds some patient records to be the length of a novel, which can be overwhelming for health care providers, especially in an emergency.

The paper, named “Call Me Dr. Ishmael” after the classic novel “Moby Dick,” found patient notes grew 30-fold in the last 17 years. In 2006, the average patient had five notes in their record, whereas today they have 359 notes.

While electronic patient records give medical providers valuable information, experts say it can be tough to sift through several years’ worth of documentation in a matter of minutes.

“The problem had switched almost 180 degrees, from not knowing enough about patients, to just having too much information that we had to sort through,” said Dr. Brian Patterson, UW Health emergency medicine physician.

UW Health researchers say artificial intelligence may be able to help.

“The things we are looking at in our research is ways we can use new tools to analyze this data. I don’t think we should stop collecting more and more data with electronic healthcare because there are reasons to collect this data to put it all in one central place,” Patterson said. “I think what people need to realize is telling one human being that they need to personally assimilate all of that information for a patient, that is becoming a more difficult task and we need to start researching technologies that do that.”

Patterson says while there isn’t much that patients or hospitals can do to help the issue, he suggests patients be as prepared as possible to answer questions about their medical history.