US adoption of electronic health records is abysmal

Ars Technica reports US adoption of electronic health records is abysmal.

The impact of computers to increase efficiency has been fairly widespread; try to imagine an architect, accountant, or administrator working without one in 2008. But some occupations seem to be holding out, and the medical profession is one of those. A new report in the New England Journal of Medicine paints a disturbing picture of just how slow adoption is.

Electronic health records (EHRs), as I found out recently while researching an article, are a byzantine and complex field, with tens of different platforms and products, both proprietary and open source. The US, unlike many other developed nations, lags behind in the widespread adoption of EHRs. Exact figures have been hard to come by in the past; numbers ranged between 9 and 20 percent among the sources I found, but those are actually overestimates, according to the NEJM report.

This is fascinating, because the value proposition is there.  Let's hope this changes, and who, knows, perhaps Digital Pathology can help drive adoption :)

Comments

[electronic health records]

One positive element that can be taken from the study is that the number of physicians making use of electronic health records is up at least 4% since a similar survey was undertaken in 2006. The progress may be slow, but at least it's steady.