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Emoji Use in the Electronic Health Record is Increasing

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Re: Emoji Use in the Electronic Health Record is Increasing

#11

Post by bpt3 »

Simulacra wrote: post #8

Perhaps I'm in the minority, but I don't think emojis should be used at all in health records… It reminds me of stories my mum would tell me about when she would get a résumé pre-digital, and there would be a mark/symbol on it, and it might meant the person is fat, black, wears glasses, etc...

There's absolutely no benefit to using them, and there are technical and non-technical issues they can cause.

I don't think you're in the minority, and even if you (we) are, you are still correct.

Re: Emoji Use in the Electronic Health Record is Increasing

#12

Post by kube-system »

jasonsb wrote: post #4
anonlinc77 wrote: post #2

Emoji use was stable from 2020-2024, then spiked in 2025. The authors don't attempt to explain it, but I bet AI is to blame. Anyone who has had to clean up AI comments riddled with stupid emojis from their code will understand this.

> Anyone who has had to clean up AI comments riddled with stupid emojis from their code will understand this. I have no idea what you're talking about. I code daily, with 80/90% of my work AI-assisted, and never had to clean one emoji. As for emojis appearing in EHRs, a more likely explanation is the growing presence of Gen Z professionals in healthcare, who are known for integrating emojis into their communication.…

I don't think an 8x spike over a year would be in any way explained by a demographic shift.

I think your personal experiences are anecdotal, unique, and not representative of EHR users.

Re: Emoji Use in the Electronic Health Record is Increasing

#13

Post by nonethewiser »

anonlinc77 wrote: post #2

Emoji use was stable from 2020-2024, then spiked in 2025. The authors don't attempt to explain it, but I bet AI is to blame. Anyone who has had to clean up AI comments riddled with stupid emojis from their code will understand this.

>Emoji use was stable from 2020-2024, then spiked in 2025.

That's from the article? Yeah I think there should be pretty much no doubt about that.

Re: Emoji Use in the Electronic Health Record is Increasing

#14

Post by zem »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #10
nnnnico wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I code daily, with 80/90% of my work AI-assisted, and never had to clean one emoji. do you read this code? I find it hard to believe unless you have llm instructions in your codebase that you are not aware of

Claude (the only model I use regularly) will definitely add emojis to non-code documentation and/or commit messages (which I almost never let it write, but it will sometimes try). However, I can't recall Claude ever adding emoji to code or in comments.

it has added emoji to shell script status output for me (green ticks, red crosses, etc)

Re: Emoji Use in the Electronic Health Record is Increasing

#15

Post by nonethewiser »

jasonsb wrote: post #4
anonlinc77 wrote: post #2

Emoji use was stable from 2020-2024, then spiked in 2025. The authors don't attempt to explain it, but I bet AI is to blame. Anyone who has had to clean up AI comments riddled with stupid emojis from their code will understand this.

> Anyone who has had to clean up AI comments riddled with stupid emojis from their code will understand this. I have no idea what you're talking about. I code daily, with 80/90% of my work AI-assisted, and never had to clean one emoji. As for emojis appearing in EHRs, a more likely explanation is the growing presence of Gen Z professionals in healthcare, who are known for integrating emojis into their communication.…

Emojis are not widely used on platforms that dont make them easy to add. IE medical software on windows.

>I have no idea what you're talking about. I code daily, with 80/90% of my work AI-assisted, and never had to clean one emoji.

Yeah because they dont just add them to any generated code. Although if you ask them to make some sort of UI that might involve graphics, they will happily add lots of emojis. They do add them very liberally, especially in headings, for writing articles, blog posts, repots etc.

Re: Emoji Use in the Electronic Health Record is Increasing

#16

Post by Wowfunhappy »

zem wrote: post #14
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claude (the only model I use regularly) will definitely add emojis to non-code documentation and/or commit messages (which I almost never let it write, but it will sometimes try). However, I can't recall Claude ever adding emoji to code or in comments.

it has added emoji to shell script status output for me (green ticks, red crosses, etc)

Oh, yes it will do that sort of thing, I forgot about that. I don't think I mind in that context?

Re: Emoji Use in the Electronic Health Record is Increasing

#17

Post by jasonsb »

kube-system wrote: post #12
jasonsb wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone who has had to clean up AI comments riddled with stupid emojis from their code will understand this. I have no idea what you're talking about. I code daily, with 80/90% of my work AI-assisted, and never had to clean one emoji. As for emojis appearing in EHRs, a more likely explanation is the growing presence of Gen Z professionals in healthcare, who are known for integrating emojis into their communication.…

I don't think an 8x spike over a year would be in any way explained by a demographic shift. I think your personal experiences are anecdotal, unique, and not representative of EHR users.

Well, it is. Let's say that AI adds emojis to my code/text. Me, a millennial who hates emojis, will tell the AI to delete those emojis and never use them again in my code or my official documents. The gen Z guy who got his first job last week will love to keep them.

Re: Emoji Use in the Electronic Health Record is Increasing

#18

Post by SoftTalker »

Simulacra wrote: post #8

Perhaps I'm in the minority, but I don't think emojis should be used at all in health records… It reminds me of stories my mum would tell me about when she would get a résumé pre-digital, and there would be a mark/symbol on it, and it might meant the person is fat, black, wears glasses, etc...

> I don't think emojis should be used at all in health records…

Strike "in health records" and you've nailed it.

Re: Emoji Use in the Electronic Health Record is Increasing

#19

Post by jawns »

I wonder if some portion of these come from templates. Maybe there's a patient communication template that includes a telephone emoji, and it gets reused.

Health care workers are in a hurry when writing notes, so I doubt they're consulting their emoji pickers just to make their notes more interesting.

Re: Emoji Use in the Electronic Health Record is Increasing

#20

Post by jasonsb »

nnnnico wrote: post #6
jasonsb wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone who has had to clean up AI comments riddled with stupid emojis from their code will understand this. I have no idea what you're talking about. I code daily, with 80/90% of my work AI-assisted, and never had to clean one emoji. As for emojis appearing in EHRs, a more likely explanation is the growing presence of Gen Z professionals in healthcare, who are known for integrating emojis into their communication.…

> I code daily, with 80/90% of my work AI-assisted, and never had to clean one emoji. do you read this code? I find it hard to believe unless you have llm instructions in your codebase that you are not aware of

I always read and review the code and it's true that the old models from 2023/2024 were using a lot of emojis. But that code was garbage. Since LLMs have started to write decent code, I haven't seen one emoji.
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