Info 202 Fall 2011

Dr. Danielle Ofri writes about her experience with electronic medical records. MRI scans, X-ray, CT scans, and EKG are digitized, viewable by any doctor in the hospital. This facilitates hospital processes by personalizing lab results for individual doctors and reminding them to ask certain questions, as well as storing each patient's history in one easily accessible place. Doctors can keep track of their patients' records and histories without having to hunt them down, and it prevents information from being lost or misread due to bad handwriting.

While acknowledging the advantages of computer use in hospitals, Dr. Ofri voices concern over the loss of intimacy in the patient-doctor relationship that results from the doctor's preoccupation with technology during a checkup - the human connection that is disturbed as the doctor turns his or her attention to entering information into a computer and away from the patient. Despite these reservations, she recognizes that technology is the most efficent way of keeping up with the sheer volume of information and pace of work in what is inevitably becoming the "era of the paperless chart."

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/08/when-computers-come-between-doctors-and-patients/?ref=health