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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

#21

Post by VanTheBrand »

jasonsb wrote: post #17
kube-system wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most people using LLMs wouldn’t even know you could tell it not to produce emoji. You are thinking about this like a coder not like a doctor.

Re: Emoji Use in the Electronic Health Record is Increasing

#23

Post by derbOac »

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...

In the article they state "We found that emojis were sent in portal messages to patients aged 70 to 79 years at the second highest rate, after those aged 10 to 19 years" which implies some of this at least is in messages to patients.

I can see sending emojis as a way of trying to be friendly and informal in communications with patients, especially if the patients have already used them.

Patients are all different so I can see some of them hating their use, but I can also see some patients appreciating a more lighthearted tone.

Pediatrics in particular is full of this kind of stuff in general.

Re: Emoji Use in the Electronic Health Record is Increasing

#24

Post by 0x1ch »

jasonsb wrote: post #17
kube-system wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm Gen Z, also an engineer. I wouldn't bother removing them from the comments, but I wouldn't add them myself lol.

Re: Emoji Use in the Electronic Health Record is Increasing

#25

Post by jskrn »

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...

Agree with your first part. On the second part, what??

Re: Emoji Use in the Electronic Health Record is Increasing

#26

Post by jasonsb »

0x1ch wrote: post #24
jasonsb wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm Gen Z, also an engineer. I wouldn't bother removing them from the comments, but I wouldn't add them myself lol.

[flagged]

Re: Emoji Use in the Electronic Health Record is Increasing

#28

Post by RajT88 »

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 use AI daily and have to clean emojis.

It depends on the task, or the particular product/agent you're using. ChatGPT is a lot more emoji-heavy than say the business Copilot. Claude code, never. GitHub copilot never.

What I can tell you is, people I know who are SME's who are being paid several hundred thousand dollars a year this past year have started just copypastaing my questions into an LLM and regurgitating back to me whatever they said.

From my friend who is a director of a medical research library, a huge number of doctors recently switched from googling shit to just running it through the free ChatGPT.

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