Medical errors kill nearly 100,000 American each year, with lethal drug interactions accounting for most of these deaths. Computerization -- which hospitals have been slow to embrace -- was supposed to eliminate most problems, but new research published Wednesday indicates that even the best computer system can’t save you from a doctor’s catastrophic screw-up. Harmful medication-related mishaps cropped up in a quarter of all patients at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salt Lake City, one of the most high-tech hospitals in the country, according to a study published in Archives of Internal Medicine.
"If you were on an airplane and a quarter of the time it crashed, that would be a problem," said study co-author Dr. Jonathan Nebeker, a physician at the VA Medical Center.
Even though the hospital's computers were supposed to protect against dangerous drug interactions, illegible prescriptions and bedside mix-ups, nine of the 937 patients studied died as a result of medication problems, the study found.
As a medical informaticist, I have always been somewhat skeptical about the "syndrome of inappropriate confidence in computers" and related beliefs in "computational alchemy." While clinical IT progress in undeniable and must proceed, one must temper expectations about the technology to realistic levels. This is especially true for those involved in clinical operations. (Similar issues occur in the pharmaceutical R&D sector, as I have observed). We are still in an era when, paraphrasing Chuck Yeager, who shot down a faster German jet in his propeller-driven P51 Mustang, "it's the [person], not the machine."
This study also suggests that when implementing clinical IT, it best be done right by those with experience in both medicine and computing, because if it's done wrong, even worse problems can result.
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