The Promise of Computers in Patient Care

In the latest Communications of the ACM: Computers in Patient Care: Why has progress been so slow?.

A good readable article that includes a good narrative about how the lack of progress effects individuals.

" ... Some of the delay certainly has been technologically related, but not as much as one might think. This article looks at some of these issues and the challenges (there are many) that remain.

First, why bother with computers in health care, anyway? There are many potential advantages from the application of health information technology (or HIT, the current buzzword). These include improved communication between a single patient's multiple health-care providers, elimination of needless medical testing, a decrease in medical errors, improved quality of care, improved patient safety, decreased paperwork, and improved legibility (yes, it's still an issue). Many of these improvements have not yet come to pass and many others are nearly impossible to rigorously prove, but for the purposes of this discussion, let's assume that HIT is a good thing ... "