If we are really going to improve healthcare using evidence-based medicine, technology presents only one of the many challenges. But it's sure to be a big part of any lasting solution. Here's a wrap-up of some current discussions.
The blog futureHIT talks about the future of IT for healthcare, social networking and network visualization tools, folksonomies, and other good stuff. The author, Dale Hunscher, captures the fundamental concept behind my work at asula when he says: "I... wonder if EBM [evidence-based medicine] isn't sometimes overblown - mostly by folks trying to point out its limitations. The way I see it, the EBM movement isn't about using artificial intelligence to get the perfect answer to every question in every situation. It's about getting all relevant facts in front of the clinician at the point of care and then trusting her to use her own judgment as to how the facts apply to the situation at hand." He goes on to reference the recent RAND study (National Report Card) on the state of healthcare quality.
This appears as comments on another blog about IT for health care, written by Shahid Shah, a/k/a the Health Care Guy, discussing a recent presentation on the subject of technology for evidence-based medicine. There you can link to a presentation from a healthtechnet.org meeting on the subject. And finally, everyone should read the New Yorker article cited in that presentation: "The Bell Curve: What happens when patients find out how good their doctors really are?" Brings to mind something George Carlin once said...
Comments