{"id":15036,"date":"2017-06-03T12:16:27","date_gmt":"2017-06-03T16:16:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=15036"},"modified":"2017-06-03T12:16:27","modified_gmt":"2017-06-03T16:16:27","slug":"doctors-willing-to-say-that-the-electronic-medical-record-emperors-have-no-clothes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2017\/06\/03\/doctors-willing-to-say-that-the-electronic-medical-record-emperors-have-no-clothes\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctors willing to say that the electronic medical record emperors have no clothes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wbur.org\/commonhealth\/2017\/05\/12\/boston-electronic-medical-records\">&#8220;Death By A Thousand Clicks: Leading Boston Doctors Decry Electronic Medical Records&#8221;<\/a> (WBUR) gives the practitioners&#8217; perspective on our country&#8217;s trillion-dollar(?) investment in computerized medical records (how do we get to $1 trillion when a typical hospital seldom spends more than $100 million on the initial implementation of\u00a0a system?; I&#8217;m factoring in years of typing by personnel as well as the ongoing support and service costs for these IT systems; we&#8217;ll get to $1 trillion soon enough!).<\/p>\n<p>My perspective on this has always been that most of the value of a DBMS comes from situations where comparisons across records have a lot of value. So an electronic medical record (EMR) would be most valuable if a doctor treating Patient A wanted to see what happened with Patients B through Z or what happened with all patients having the same condition who were treated in that hospital. These turn out not to be common queries.<\/p>\n<p>Are we budgeting to pull out of this financial dive when full artificial intelligence is developed? An AI assistant will listen to a doctor or nurse speaking and then fill out the screens of a $100 million electronic health record system that has its technological roots in the 1960s?<\/p>\n<p>Related:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/11\/electronic-medical-records-dont-save-money\/\">Electronic medical records don&#8217;t save money<\/a>\u00a0(2013 study)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/27\/most-efficient-medical-record-system-for-dogs-and-cats-paper\/\">Most efficient medical record system for dogs and cats: paper<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2015\/12\/07\/brain-surgeon-tortured-by-software-developers-and-hospital-bureaucrats\/\">Brain surgeon tortured by software developers and hospital bureaucrats<\/a>\u00a0(they&#8217;re not doing any better over in England)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/23\/how-well-will-hospitals-adapt-to-their-new-100-million-it-systems\/\">How well will hospitals adapt to their new $100 million IT systems?<\/a>\u00a0(2009)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2013\/02\/20\/health-care-it-industry-profits-from-crony-capitalism\/\">Health care IT industry profits from crony capitalism<\/a>\u00a0(2013)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Death By A Thousand Clicks: Leading Boston Doctors Decry Electronic Medical Records&#8221; (WBUR) gives the practitioners&#8217; perspective on our country&#8217;s trillion-dollar(?) investment in computerized medical records (how do [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Doctors willing to say that the electronic medical record emperors have no clothes - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2017\/06\/03\/doctors-willing-to-say-that-the-electronic-medical-record-emperors-have-no-clothes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Doctors willing to say that the electronic medical record emperors have no clothes - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&#8220;Death By A Thousand Clicks: Leading Boston Doctors Decry Electronic Medical Records&#8221; 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