Stanford (Calif.) Medicine started working on Green Button, a system that provides physicians with advice on how to treat patients with various "characteristics that have not been examined in clinical trials," according to The Stanford Daily.
Here are five key components of the project.
1. The system would grant physicians access to millions of EMRs, providing information applicable to a patient's complicated case.
2. Physicians could still seek guidance even if clinical trials don't exist for a specific patient's condition. The likelihood that an existing clinical trial pairs with a patient's condition is a mere 4 percent, according to the article.
3. The idea involves physicians looking up EMRs in real-time to decide on treatment steps, based on how other physicians already treated patients with similar sympotms.
4. The researchers face the difficult task of compiling enough patient data for the comprehensive system. Many healthcare organizations may deny participation due to privacy issues.
5. To avoid privacy concerns, the system may instead request a summary of EMR data after physicians put in requests.