The New York Times has an article today discussing a new study by the Harvard School of Public Health on the benefits of the adoption of electronic medical records and networked information technologies in health care. The article, entitled “Little Benefit Seen, So Far, in Electronic Patient Records” study is entitled contains the following key conclusions:
“The research also underlines the challenge facing the Obama administration as it seeks to accelerate the adoption of electronic health records through 2015, even though only about 20 percent of physicians now use them. And the research shows that installing the technology does not necessarily mean that the hoped-for gains in quality and cost containment will follow quickly.”
Given the fact that so few hospitals and medical centers have utilized these technologies widely until very recently – and many still do not as the article notes – it should not be surprising that the results so far are hard to measure. What is not often appreciated about communications and information technologies is that the real benefits of the technologies come about as people learn to use them more effectively and adapt their own work habits – and even in many cases change their business or agency structures and operating procedures – to take maximum advantage of the capabilities of the technologies.
A famous case of this occurred in the early days of computer adoption. The Nobel Laureate, Robert Solow, took a look at the adoption and use of the then relatively new technology known as the personal computer. His analysis suggested that there was relatively little impact of the technology in terms of the economy and productivity as was predicted. He then went on to make this catchy comment:
“You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics."
Just a few years after he made these comments, the productivity figures clearly began to turn and reflected the huge impacts of computers on productivity. But it was not until computers were networked and people could use them expansively to connect with other people and data of all kinds that the effects were really powerfully seen. Rob Atkinson of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation has pointed out how important networking of computers has been to U. S. productivity and growth – but it took decades to expand networks and connect hundreds of millions of computers.
The truth is that information and communications technologies are very powerful but the technologies don’t do the work themselves and they do not operate in a vacuum. Human beings need to use them, adapt them and in some cases change how they work in order to get the maximum benefits from the technologies. Recently, as I noted in a blog post, it became clear that for the first time paper use actually declined in offices, despite many years in which people talked about the “paperless” office. Why? It appears in part because more and more people are now comfortable reading emails, documents and reports online than in the past. Until very recently, it appears people were wont to print most things out before they read them rather than reading them online. Clearly they’ve adapted to and become more comfortable with the technology.
Over time, I am confident the same thing will happen with regard to health IT and electronic medical records. But it clearly will take work and commitment to make it happen. Now is not the time to slow down.