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Contributed by Dr. Steven Klassen, Family Physician, Thunder Bay, ON and OntarioMD Peer Leader

Recently, I accepted a 70 year old man into my family practice. He presented to our first encounter with nothing but his spouse to aid his recall. I had prior hints of his complex history but it soon became evident that neither of the pair had the memory or detail that would have been nice for this intake interview.

One of the tools I have come to cherish in such encounters is OLIS. Subtly integrated within my EMR, in a matter of a couple of clicks I am in the position to query the database for the patient in front of me. On verbal consent from this septuagenarian, I launched digital minions to fetch the last ten years of his labs. Moments later another click of a button allows me to download the retrieved treasure trove into my EMR. Less than a minute later I am pointing to a graph generated by my EMR of his hemoglobin and asking him, “ What happened to you at this dramatic dip in February 2016.?” Visibly impressed, he recalls, “Oh that is when I had my stroke and was given clot busters”. In just minutes, I was able to get a better picture of trends and perspectives that improved my ability to care for this patient without having to send him for duplicate lab tests.

Later, my questions about his diabetes were met with firm denial, yet his previous family doctor had already ordered a Hb A1c in 2015 which was reported at 6.7%. A picture of denial was emerging. The graph of his LDL cholesterol shows the classic swings of someone at one time started on a statin who later stops it only to be started again. In this case, the statin had evidently been stopped approximately a year before his stroke but promptly restarted in February 2017 fitting perfect with my lab graph. My patient and his wife look at me like I have psychic powers. I smile and thank my EMR and OLIS for the good start we were off to.

Dr. Steven Klassen, Family Physician, Thunder Bay, ON and OntarioMD Peer Leader