Where to from here?

I have 2 questions for you: "Why did we start using information technology in healthcare?" and "Is there any proof that information technology is actually proving any benefit to the provision of care in health?"

The answers to these questions should be pretty simple, you would think, but when you look a bit deeper you can see that behind all the rah-rah and whoopee and "let's-congratulate-ourselves- with-this-wonderful-system-we-developed-that-goes-beep" that the average person has not really benefitted from our present models of providing information technology to the provision of care and we seem to be saying we started using information technology (IT) in healthcare to provide better care for those that receive it.

What a load of "stuff that we may discard". You do not need to be a scientist to know that the more computers in healthcare do not equate to the provision of better care.

The more time a clinician (doctor, nurse, specialist, etc...) can spend with the patient the better the care that can be provided. The more money there is to spend on the patient, the better the care that can be provided.

Computation in healthcare should facilitate better care provision and not detract from the provision of care by the clinician.

But how can it when the software in use is complex and slow and does not do the jobs that the doctors want?

There are no simple answers to these questions - they have become too diluted by special interest to have clear meaning and redress.

What I am seeing is the need to provide clinicians with unobtrusive computational components that assist their delivery of care. How we go about doing this, to start with, is through the componentisation and commoditisation of healthcare information technology requirements.

Better yet, we can use technology to provide the facilities for better care to the generations following us...but where to start...???

Q:Where to form here?

A: 2WURK!