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All the entries posted on April 25, 2008.
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Friday, April 25, 2008
Doctors still prefer paper records
Software developers and health-care technology managers seem baffled by the lack of interest by doctors in upgrading their record-keeping applications and their resistance to the Internet as a way to share patient information.
It was one of the main topics at a conference Thursday of biotechnology and health-care technology managers at Florida International University in Miami. The meeting was sponsored by the Enterprise Development Corp. of South Florida.
Gary Margulies, vice president of research at Nova Southeastern University, figured doctors are too worried about legal and liability issues to pass private patient data over the Internet. Or there may be resistance because “business as usual” is fine with the health-care industry.
“Medical professionals don’t see the need to change this,” Margulies said.
Amir Mirmiran, FIU’s interim engineering dean at Florida International University, guessed that engineers and doctors haven’t really “sat down at a table and talked” about the industry’s needs.
One thing is certain. There’s a mountain of records that still haven’t been digitized in doctor’s offices, and it’s going to get worse.
“There’s a flood of data in health care and there’s more to come with the growth in genomic data,” said Steve Payment, IBM site manager in Boca Raton.