Elsevier announced today a partnership with Epic Systems to deliver iCONSULT within Epic's electronic health record. This will allow hospital and group medical practices who use Epic to have iCONSULT deliver real-time clinical decision support by putting evidence-based, point-of-care clinical reference content directly into the EHR.

In April 8, 2005, I blogged about a demonstration I saw of iConsult and their plans to integrate into the EHR. It seems as if they have been successful and are now partnering with major EHR software companies. This is the way to go for seamless access to medical information, having the ability to access important medical information and answer questions while in EHR. No more seeing the patient and then going to a computer terminal (usually not in the patients room) or the library to look up information.

As I mentioned earlier, This is huge and it involves other hospital departments including and beyond the library. Since it involves other departments, think out of the box. Perhaps get the institution as a whole to support and finance MDConsult, FirstConsult, and iConsult. The products have now transcended from being a library product for the institution and become an institutional wide product for library/information resources.

One of the questions that keeps lurking in the back of mind is; What does this mean for companies like UpToDate who have been experimenting with electronic medical records? Does that mean other companies like UpToDate will not be able to integrate their product with Epic's EHR now that they have a partnership with Elsevier? If so, then I foresee the product (UpToDate, iConsult, etc.) that a hospital uses is dependent on what EHR software they use.