Saturday, September 8, 2012

ObamaCare and Laptop Medicine

The era of laptop medicine is now upon us.  Rather, make that laptop-computer medicine.
Visit your physician, and odds are that he will enter the examining room with his shiny new laptop in hand.  The push for electronic records in the name of medical record portability and efficient record-keeping is documented in the press, and the potential advantages appear convincing.
As a physician, a medically necessary visit to another physician is always a bit of a worrisome event.  Decades of practice have validated the notion that physicians can and do make errors.  However, on this recent visit, my attention became focused on the central role that the laptop computer had assumed in the physician-patient interaction. 
My answers to my own physician's questions were inputted to the laptop via a stylus touchpad.  No typing skills necessary for the keyboard-challenged.  One can only hope that the pre-programmed list of choices accurately reflected my potential responses.  Chest discomfort?  Would that be on exertion?  How much exertion?  Was that discomfort actually ribcage discomfort, as in a pesky costochondral rib joint, and not heart-related?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

This is an interesting post. I think that as electronic medical Rrecords technologies advance and grow, they will adapt to the needs of medical professionals and their patients. I think it is important that these limitations be exposed, as they are in your post, so the EMR industry can make more practical software.