Brown University, Alpert Medical School

The Patient, the Practitioner, and the Computer International Symposium

The presence of the computer in the exam room has profoundly affected the relationship between patients and their practitioners and between practitioners and their work. This first-time international symposium will bring together leading researchers to examine the impact of the electronic record on the patient-practitioner relationship, the role of human factors in software and device design, and best practices for integrating computers into clinical practice, while keeping patients at the center of care. The target audience includes patients, clinicians, medical educators, technology designers, and institutional and government leaders.

From March 17-19, 2017 Brown University’s Alpert Medical School will host “The Patient, the Practitioner, and the Computer: Holding on to the Core of Our Healing Professions in a Time of Technological Change.” This international and inter-professional conference is intended for patients, clinicians, educators, technology designers, institutional health information technology leaders, governmental policy makers and the general public. We believe the meeting will bring together the best current researchers and thinkers in this field and will produce innovative educational models for teaching medical professionals how to maximize the potential of electronic health records (EHRs), while returning their energies to the patient.
The objective of the conference is to bring together scholars from the United States, where EHRs have been met with some praise, but also much criticism and frustration, as well as other countries in the world where EHR implementation has been a more positive experience.  The conference will culminate in the creation of a consensus statement summarizing these areas of research. It is meant to be a summation of the most important research on the impact of the EHR on the patient-practitioner relationship.