Bad Health Informatics Can Kill. I've emphasized this issue in a number of posts.
This link contains summaries of a number of reported incidents in healthcare where IT was the cause or a significant factor. It comes from the Working Group for Assessment of Health Information Systems of the European Federation for Medical Informatics (EFMI).
Any clinician involved in health IT projects, even as users, should be well-versed in these issues.
-- SS
It's clear there are many problem, but what's the alternative? There may be flaws in electronic systems, but the alternative is having patients enter a highly complex environment, one where there are myriad opportunities for harm, without the kind of record keeping that WalMart gives a pallet of lamb chops or a packing crate of coffee makers. What I think these examples ought to be suggesting is that EMR are no panacea for what ails health care, but they are necessary if we have any hope fixing it.
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