Doctors, patients more likely to approve flu vaccine when given electronic prompts

In a recent study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, Mitesh Patel found that adding an active choice mechanism to patients’ electronic health records increased rates of flu vaccination. “Our results indicate that this simple intervention could be an effective and scalable approach to use the design of electronic health records to increase the rate of flu vaccinations, which are estimated to prevent millions of flu cases and tens of thousands of related hospitalizations every year,” said Patel.