Identifying vendors in studies of electronic health records: the editor replies

I thank Dr O'Donnell for his letter asking if we did not name the vendors in a study of the electronic health record (EHR)-generated discharge summaries1 as a matter of policy or simply due to an oversight. The vulnerabilities and unintended consequences of health information technologies have appeared as recurring themes in both research papers2–7 and editorials8–10 at BMJ Quality & Safety. We agree that such studies should generally mention the vendors involved, just as one would expect to occur in studies of medical devices, such as infusion pumps or surgical implants.

In this case, the omission of the vendors did indeed result from an oversight. We had asked the authors to identify the vendors in our comments as part of the editorial comments added to those from external...

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