Electronic Medical Records and patient medicine

This item is interesting and ought to be of relevance to SIS.

"In essence, we found little difference in the quality of care being provided by physicians with electronic health record systems, compared to those without these systems," Dr. Randall Stafford, a Stanford associate professor of medicine and senior author of the research, said in a statement. The research is scheduled for publication Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The issue isn't necessarily that electronic records don't help make better decisions. For one thing, many systems just transferred previously paper records into electronic form without adding extra abilities such as checking for negative drug interactions. For another, doctors often don't necessarily take advice from an electronic system.