The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age

by Robert M. Wachter

Knowing how crucial it is to observe how real people actually do their work in order to design functioning computer systems, Burton is irritated by how little attention these vendors have given to the plight of frontline clinicians and their patients.

the literature of medicine, which currently contains about 24 million records and expands at a rate of 2,100 articles per day. The idea that a human being could keep up with this flood of literature is laughable.

Much of the data in EHRs continues to be collected for the purpose of creating a superior bill, and using this waste product of administrative functions for clinical decision making can lead to a GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) problem, even with fabulous analytics.

professionals do their best to manage their cognitive loads by shedding tasks, falling back on automation, and focusing their attention on some things and away from others. But ultimately the brain begins to tire, and that’s when you see people cutting the wrong corner.

she called the “irony of automation.” “The more advanced a control system is,” she wrote, “so the more crucial may be the contribution of the human operator.

like a safe deposit box, unlocking IT’s potential requires the turning of two keys—the technology itself and the redesign of the surrounding environment.

In his book Smarter than You Think, Clive Thompson endorsed this idea, making a forceful case that people working collaboratively with technology are far more effective than either people or technology alone.