Our conviction is that technology should serve humanity, not the other way around. VEHR is the concrete and immediate manifestation of a broader cultural development and an impetus for a paradigm shift in patient records management. 

This is the story that comes from our conviction...

Through my medical education and practice, I quickly and repeatedly have learned that while healthcare is about taking care of people and not records, the two activities are inseparable. Unfortunately, often it feels like our lives are dictated by the difficulties of charting.

Healthcare systems have made the safety-enhancing transition from paper to electronic platforms. But as I and every provider have experienced, the growth of large and difficult-to-review medical data sets, compounded by time demands on providers to enter digital orders and problem lists, has led to decreased efficiency and burnout in the medical field.

In the 1970s, Dr. Larry Weed, the innovator behind SOAP note formatting, taught that our documentation should not be “source-oriented” by data type, the way that was natural to paper charts (tabs for every section…) and now for our current electronic charts (tabs for every section…). Though SOAP caught on, Weed’s solution of “problem-oriented” documentation hasn’t.

To solve the challenges of data overload and chart management drudgery, I have worked with a brilliant development team to create VEHR, a “second generation EHR”: a system that presents data for review in a problem-oriented, timeline-based format, and will automate the order and problem creation processes.

I’m excited to bring VEHR to the world, so we can all “see how we think” about our patients – making the vital work of patient care easier, faster, and safer for everyone.

-Cole Marolf, MD, co-founder of VEHR Technologies and practicing family medicine and hospital physician