[Sigia-l] NYT article

[Marcy Jacobs]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/09/technology/09compute.html?th

Doctors' Journal Says Computing Is No Panacea
By STEVE LOHR 

Published: March 9, 2005


The Bush administration and many health experts have declared that the
nation's health care system needs to move quickly from paper records
and prescriptions into the computer age. Modern information
technology, they insist, can deliver a huge payoff: fewer medical
errors, lower costs and better care.
  
But research papers and an editorial published today in The Journal of
the American Medical Association cast doubt on the wisdom of betting
heavily that information technology can transform health care anytime
soon.

One paper, based on a lengthy study at a large teaching hospital,
found 22 ways that a computer system for physicians could increase the
risk of medication errors. Most of these problems, the authors said,
were created by poorly designed software that too often ignored how
doctors and nurses actually work in a hospital setting.

The likelihood of errors was increased, the paper stated, because
information on patients' medications was scattered in different places
in the computer system. To find a single patient's medications, the
researchers found, a doctor might have to browse through up to 20
screens of information.