Current efforts aimed at the nationwide deployment of healthcare IT will not be sufficient to achieve medical leaders' vision of health care in the 21st century and may even set back the cause, says a new report from the National Research Council.
The report, based partially on site visits to eight U.S. medical centers considered leaders in the field of healthcare IT, concludes that greater emphasis should be placed on IT that provides healthcare workers and patients with cognitive support, such as assistance in decision making and problem solving.
The report describes difficulties with data sharing and integration, deployment of new IT capabilities, and large-scale data management. Most importantly, current healthcare IT systems offer little cognitive support; clinicians spend a great deal of time sifting through large amounts of raw data (such as lab and other test results) and integrating it with their medical knowledge to form a whole picture of the patient. Many care providers told the committee that data entered into their IT systems was used mainly to comply with regulations or to defend against lawsuits, rather than to improve care. As a result, valuable time and energy is spent managing data as opposed to understanding the patient.
Read the report.
