“This report wasn’t at all balanced. Sad.”

Actually, the report was backed up by empirical evidence, unlike your statement that it “wasn’t balanced.”

You’re right, not many in industry will like this report, but neither was the Flexner Report on medical education and certification liked when it appeared a century ago.

However, to not act on this report and the Dec. 2008 Joint Commission Sentinel Event Alert, and to continue with the status quo is unacceptable. I predict that not acting will result in painful marketplace failures and litigation. Not to mention adding a new angle to malpractice litigation.

The findings are hopefully going to be beneficial towards the improvement of healthcare.

I think the informatics and medical communities owe a debt of gratitude to the editors and contributors who made this report possible. It is a bit daring in some ways.

The report addresses HIT’s issues in a sober, scientific manner. It is a contretemps to the irrationalism, neglect of scientific principles and colorful marketing that seems to have developed in the industry in recent years that’s led to corporate claims that HIT will ipso facto “revolutionize healthcare” as well as paradoxical HIT leadership structures.

I would welcome a return to sound scientific approaches to HIT design, deployment and diffusion, with a purpose of facilitating healthcare and HC professionals (not “revolutionizing” it, whatever that means), to replace a marketing and profit driven exuberance that seems a characteristic of HIT, and perhaps all IT, today.

I hope this report and the recent Joint Commission Sentinel Event Alert on HIT will foster a return in HIT to the scientific rigor of medicine itself.

It does tend to validate the work of a relatively small group of us in Biomedical Informatics, IT-Sociology, and related fields. In my case I’ve been writing on these issues for over ten years, after observations as a CMIO at a large hospital.

Dr. Octo Barnett at Harvard, one of the contributors and an informatics pioneer, goes back further. The report could be considered a fleshing out of his “Ten Commandments” for HIT, addressing why healthcare was not receiving the benefits expected of HIT.

Dr. Barnett wrote his “Ten Commandments” in 1970. Others wrote on similar issues back then as well.

These can be seen in “A History of Medical Informatics in the United States 1950-1990″ (pp. 167-175), Morris F. Collen B.E.E., M.D., 1995, American Medical Informatics Association, ISBN 0-9647743-0-5.

Scot Silverstein
Drexel University
Institute for Healthcare Informatics
Philadelphia, PA

This is an interesting group: mostly computer experts who could bring an objective viewpoint to the table (no vendors, no advocacy people, no caregivers).

No bias? No motives? No for profit interests?

Who checked these guys out ahead of time? Does Intel tip it’s hand below? Does Google or MS have any “monetization” interest in healthcare search?

And, what group of professors in a room with Google and Intel won’t be thinking about funding sources for their next projects.

This report wasn’t at all balanced. Sad.

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