Digital dystopia: Developing tools that work in practice

Physicians have access to many digital tools that can enhance care delivery. But identifying the technology that makes care less efficient and building new tools that are based on physician perspectives from the start are critical to developing a digital practice environment that works for physicians and patients, AMA Executive Vice President and CEO James L. Madara, MD, said in his address at the 2016 AMA Annual Meeting. The potential exists—changing the digital dystopia “Today … we have really remarkable tools,” Dr. Madara said, “robotic surgery, new forms of radiation therapy, emerging biologics. And we live in a time of rapid development in the digital world.” “But you know something, appearing in disguise among these positive products are other digital so-called advancements that don’t have an appropriate evidence base … or that just don’t work well or that actually impede care, confuse patients and waste our time,” he said, “from ineffective electronic health records (EHR) to an explosion of direct-to-consumer digital health products to apps, some of which are of poor quality.” Even digital products that might otherwise be helpful often lack a way of enriching the patient-physician relationship, Dr. Madara said. This environment is “something I might  call our digital dystopia.” Digital tools can be useful and hold the potential for magnificence, he said, but physicians today are tasked with separating the useful from the harmful...
Source: AMA Wire - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Source Type: news