Leveraging the electronic health record to improve dermatologic care delivery: The importance of finding structure in data

The federal mandate for electronic health record (EHR) keeping for health care providers impacted the burden placed on dermatologists for medical documentation. The hope that EHR would improve care quality and efficiency and reduce health disparities has yet to be fully realized. Despite the significant time and effort spent on documentation, the majority of EHR clinical data remain unstructured and therefore, difficult to process and analyze. Structured data can provide a way for dermatologists and data scientists to make more effective use of clinical data-not only to improve the dermatologist's experience with EHRs, but also to manage technology-related administrative burden, accelerate understanding of disease, and enhance care delivery for patients. Understanding the importance of structured data will allow dermatologists to actively engage in how clinical data will be collected and used to advance patient care.