Vorlon Whispers

Some Thoughts on the Medical Profession

I have a now had an up close and detailed personal look at the medical profession. My experience with the people has been primarily very positive. I have found the people to be dedicated, hard working and doing their best for their patients. I always like to think most organizations as a business. To me, patients are simply customers to the medical people.

The medical profession has a lot of nice toys. They have x-rays, CAT scans, PET scans, MRIs and many other things. They also have some great chemicals to treat their customers’ problems.

But when you look at their Information Technology they are incredibly backward. Walk into almost any doctor’s office and look around. You will find plenty of computers, but you’ll find they are used for billing and MAYBE scheduling. But that’s it. Look around the walls and you will see shelves and shelves of patient folders.

Have they ever considered what would happen if there was a fire? They would loose all their customer records in a flash. There is NO backup for the patient data.

I don’t know any business that would be so caviler about their information database. Also, if you’re working with more than one doctor, you need to hand carry or fax the information to the other doctor.

Why aren’t patient records stored in a computer database that any doctor, with proper security, could access?

My oncologist is treating me with a particular treatment protocol. But I’ll bet you my treatment and results will never make it into a national database. Why aren’t all patient treatments being recorded nation wide. If that were the case, it could be mined for trends and results. As it is now, they do what they call clinical trials. The results of these are written up and then used for more research.

I think there are two impediments to medicine moving into the 21st century. First, take a look at most doctor offices. From a business standpoint, they are mom and pop establishments. Most doctor offices are a one, two or three man/woman operation. They just don’t have the capital or mindset for such an IT investment.

Second is patient confidentiality. This is government inspired and makes it very difficult to publish patient information. But by locking up that data the world may very well be missing some very good data.

The third item is installed infrastructure. X-ray machines are rather expensive and they last a long time. Upgrading them to digital is probably no small investment. In additional, most doctors seem averse to looking at x-rays on the computer screen versus the film.

It’s going to take something very big to drag the medical profession, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century.

Posted by The Vorlon at November 3, 2005 5:04 PM