MedSocket: a personalized medical meta-search engine for questions at the point of care

Abstract

In the U.S., healthcare is a $2.4 trillion industry, and health information technology costs exceed $65 billion per year. Healthcare expenditures are currently at 17% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product and are expected to rise to 20% by 2017. Improving the information available to physicians and streamlining the delivery of quality care can help stem rising healthcare costs. Through enormous investment in research, the needed information is often available but located in a variety of sources that are difficult and time consuming to use. Due to time constraints, physicians are rarely able to conduct online searches to sufficiently answer patient-specific, clinical or administrative questions at the point of care. Existing search engines don't fit the particular physician needs and preferences giving either too little or too much information. MedSocket is an innovative and patent-pending search engine that implements an information retrieval system from a physician's point-of-view. Also accessible from mobile devices, it will provide convenient and useful access to medical information sources to answer all types of questions. MedSocket offers a single user interface and is highly customized to search medical information, enabling a simultaneous search of the best online resources; a user's personal digitized knowledge stored in notes, emails or documents; and a hospital or departmental intranet. To achieve an optimal search experience, it integrates into electronic health record systems and offers many levels of personalization. MedSocket will utilize the user's medical context, query different content sources (set by user), and deliver only results most relevant to the user. Allowing easy and instant access to current research results, MedSocket will speed the information delivery to the patient's bedside, which currently could take as long as 17 years. MedSocket has the capability to greatly improve care delivered by physicians and make a significant impact on the U.S. healthcare system. Potential Areas of Applications: * Point of Care * Medical Research Patent Status: Pending Inventor(s): Karl Kochendorfer, MD, FAAFP karl@medsocket.com - MedSocket LLC Contact Info: Paul Hippenmeyer, Ph.D., M.B.A. hippenmeyerp@missouri.edu (573)-882-0470