Medscape reported today, that “The American Academy of Pediatrics has embraced the medical home concept, which can provide cost-effective, high-quality primary care and coordinate specialty care when operating as envisioned, the AAP’s Council on Clinical Information Technology states in an April 25 article and in the May issue of Pediatrics. Among other things, “the medical home must centralize and support the primary care relationship between the patient/family and health care provider through well-designed and well-implemented health information management.”

The article went to to explain,”to accomplish these goals, the council calls for the “development, implementation, and widespread deployment of a comprehensive electronic infrastructure to support pediatric information-management functions of the family-centered medical home.”

The article highlighted most important information management tasks to include: secure and comprehensive maintenance of patient records; organizing all of a patient’s information, including family medical history, as well as information about medical care, immunizations, and prescriptions over the patient’s lifetime, into a single easily accessible database; tracking treatment outcomes; educating and sharing information with the patient and his or her family; and use of data for research and quality improvement.

This is just another instance, in which technology is helping to improve patient care.