[Harrison]

Deborah,

As usual, you raise a myriad of really good points. And you seem to be very fair and objective in your assessment of EMR.

Did you see the latest story from Business Week on the subject of EMR? It’s nicely researched & written. There are many interesting points, most of which (previously) formed the basis of my concerns. Here’s my position: until most of the problems cited in the article are resolved, then spending money on these projects will trickle down to giants in the healthcare industry (GE, McKesson, Gingrich Consulting) and do little for us patients.

Can the thought leaders in health care reform slow down, think things through carefully and do something correctly? These issues are complex and have many moving parts!

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In Depth April 23, 2009
The Dubious Promise of Digital Medicine

GE, Google, and others, in a stimulus-fueled frenzy, are piling into the business. But electronic health records have a dubious history
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And more importantly, referring to the intent to my original post (Genes, insurance, law, discrimination) – we all need to be very concerned with the consolidation of private and public information collected on us as individual human beings. Database aggregation, data mining and “behind the scenes information deals” aren’t even mentioned in this article, but we’ve talked about this in related topics. E.g., the ease at which detectives and skilled info-brokers can buy our individual medical records...

Ethics and the legal rights of individuals are not a priority in any of these governmental discussions; if they are mentioned, it’s a sales tactic or political rhetoric.