There's still likely some good reason to do that work manually. The quality of data entry into EMRs is often poor, especially when it comes to event or time dat

There's still likely some good reason to do that work manually. The quality of data entry into EMRs is often poor, especially when it comes to event or time data that's not just numeric bloodwork. Imagine that at a random physicals date your patient was suddenly was 155kg and 65cm tall. Or for another example, having someone be inaccurately be diagnosed as having new onset diabetes after transplant, despite them having DM for several years prior. People switch up entry fields, inaccurately assess or diagnose patients all the time--generally because of the sheer variety of ways in which data can be screwed up, only a person can notice those oddities (or write a little script to fix them). At population levels I could concede that these errors may well be inconsequential though.