As we approach this year's Thanksgiving holiday, the general 2020 theme of “yeah this is not great” is looming heavy. If you are like me, I am sure your Thanksgiving holiday is going to be a bit less “traditional” than in years before. My version of the “traditional” Thanksgiving is spent with loved ones, sharing stories, throwing around the football and consuming a wonderful feast followed by the ceremonial loosening of the belts.  

Since the HITECH Act of 2009, hospitals have rapidly moved away from traditional paper-based processes towards paperless processes. Never before has the healthcare industry seen such a period of technological advancements and adoption over a relatively short period of time. For all these paperless advancements, however, there are still consistent “paper-gaps” within hospitals. This  is very important because what this tells us is that hospitals generally are still struggling with the same paper-based processes. Electronic health record (EHR) systems (i.e., Epic, Cerner, MEDITECH) are wonderful at tackling clinical documentation, but they are less focused on digitizing the processes that can occur between the hospital and the patient. This results in paper-based consent forms, questionnaires, government forms, and so on.