What are really the problems with EHRs

There are a lot of complaints about EHRs (2016). Too much useless typing, too many clicks to get what you want, records are not really available. scanned documents are a pain, release forms take forever.

The intended benefits of an EHR are obvious. Data gathered about a patient should be available to everybody who needs to see it, quickly and seamlessly, just like all the other rocket science apps that track our dating.

I see two major problems: data sharing, and user experience.

• Data sharing - electronic health records was never a community service. When a doc or medical situation of a small team needed an IT solution, it was solved only for that particular team or doc. Nothing was intended to be shared. This creates the data silos. It would be a perfect metaphor except real silos can exchange grain so easily just by trucking it over. There is also the other turn of phrase, standards, of which there are, comically, many. There's no universal heath record, or even univesal health patient identifier.
• User Experience, both data entry and retrieval. The pencil used to be the universal recording medium. It was infinitely creative, hobbled a bit by legibility. Typing is so ... easy... that you're expected to do it constantly, but you can't draw. For retrieval, the current EHRs have at best the most rudimentary search. The EHR for a single patient reads like an electronic phone book: if you know what you're looking for you can find it, but it doesn't tell you what the town is like. Everyone complains that you get a lot of data but you just don't get what is happening to the patient.

It's annoying to hear complaints with out solutions. For once I feel I have some.

• Data sharing - the world is going to have to spend some time and money making a universal health record, just like a utility. It's not difficult to do, it just takes some desire and money
• UX - there's a lot of deeply -thought out UX design that could happen. But really just a quick modification to the 'facesheet': add a 3 line text box for a few notes about current status. A lot more could be done but that would change things radically.

These problems are not rocket science. Technologically they are simple. Maybe labor is involved but not much thought.