Bad news on electronic medical records

According to experts in the field cited by Powerline, they are not yet at a point where they are intuitive to doctors to the point where they can be relied upon.  So for starters, let's repeat what we should have known already; you, and those who care for you, are the best patient advocates you've got.  Not your medical provider's records.

Moreover, as someone who has used databases like those they're trying to develop for a while, suffice it to say that it's just plain hard to get good data out of a database for a simple thing like a build of parts.  Now imagine that the database needs to cover the family medicine doctor, the cardiologist, an oncologist or two, and half a dozen other doctors.

How to remedy the situation?  Well, one would start with a little bit of what's called poka-yoke, or "error proofing".  You swipe the patient's card before weighing the patient to make sure the wrong weight isn't entered.  You put the blood pressure monitor into a USB port to automatically download that, and so on.

But even so, a toe can slip onto the scale, a cuff can malfunction, and a drug name can be misspelled.  And so we are left with a difficult fact; it's hard to do better than to keep your medical records for yourself, or have someone you love who is able to speak for you.  Speaking from experience, speaking up can result in getting rid of a couple of intestinal polyps, and that in a healthcare system whose founder basically invented the modern medical chart.