S U P R A S P I N A T U S

Over at the Health Care Renewal blog contributor MedInformaticsMD has posted a contrarian's viewpoint on electronic medical records. The piece is interesting in that he doesn't take the curmudgeon's path of resisting change for the sake of resisting change, but actually marshals some published authority in favor of his points, which in rough summary are:

• Healthcare IT is a field that unless brought back to sanity will transfer countless dollars to the IT sector that healthcare and patients cannot afford
• EMR's are still an experimental technology and should be thought of as such
• The majority of information systems developments in most sectors are unsuccessful
• The "cost of ownership" puts a big doubt upon EMR projects as a cost-reducing endeavor
• With regard to effectiveness of EMR's in actually improving healthcare quality, even that is doubtful

Useful reading, even if you disagree with the arguments. Link to the full post here.