IBM announced this week what they call an Anatomic and Symbolic Mapper Engine (ASME) that allows doctors to visualize patient medical records in 3-D using an avatar. Using a mouse, a doctor can click on a particular part of the avatar's "body" to trigger a search of medical records to retrieve relevant information.
The idea is to be able to display information contained within electronic health records in a way that a doctor can make sense of quickly, and is specific to the ailment a patient is currently complaining about. You can go to the press announcement link above and see a sample illustration.
I will be curious to see how this approach impacts how electronic health records are designed and what information is captured.
I guess soon our electronic medical records will be made up of our own avatars that replicate us down to our genetic code.
