Sometimes paying taxes does bring a dividend. One giant time saving feature is being offered by the National Library of Medicine for those physicians who use EMR.
Medline Plus Connect is a free service of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This service allows any electronic health record (EHR) system to easily link users to Medline Plus, an authoritative up-to-date health information resource for patients, families and health care providers. Medline Plus provides information about conditions and disorders, medications, and health and wellness.
Medline Plus Connect accepts requests for information on diagnoses (problem codes) and medications. NLM has mapped Medline Plus health topics to two standard diagnostic coding systems used in EHRs. When your EHR submits a request to Medline Plus Connect, the service returns the closest matching health topic(s) as a response.
Medline Plus Connect can also link your EHR system to drug information written especially for patients. EHR systems can send Medline Plus Connect a request for a medication code, and the service will return link(s) to the most appropriate drug information
Medline Plus Connect web site offers technical assistance for software vendors to add links to their programs linking them to Medline Plus Connect.
Medline Plus Connect offers several demonstration programs as a sample of it’s operational features.