BMJ  2004;328:1197-1199 (15 May), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7449.1197

Education and debate

Four rules for the reinvention of health care

¹ Centre for Health Informatics, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2055, Australia e.coiera@unsw.edu.au

If health care is to evolve at a pace that will meet the needs of society it will need to embrace this science of sociotechnical design, but ultimately it is our culture's beliefs and values that shape what we will create and what we dream

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Futurists might like to speculate on what the health services of 2020 look like. The world may be such that as a clinician you work in flexible virtual teams and some of your colleagues are computers. You would of course instinctively mistrust clinicians who always know the answer without consulting the information grid, and patients often choose to be the team leader. Keyboards are banned as harmful and can be found in museums, next to punch cards and spittoons. The health record is a direct multimedia history of conversations, and a software agent is its curator. For the still cognitively limited clinician, your earring whispers your patient's name when you meet.

More importantly, in 2020 the health system in most nations will have to treat proportionately more people, with more illness, using relatively fewer tax dollars and workers.¹ Given that commentators today are alarmed at the current strains on the . . . [Full text of this article]

-->-->
CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    StumbleUpon    Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

What next for electronic communication and health care?

Alejandro R Jadad and Tony Delamothe
BMJ 2004 328: 1143-1144. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Scott, P. J., Briggs, J. S. (2009). A Pragmatist Argument for Mixed Methodology in Medical Informatics. Journal of Mixed Methods Research 3: 223-241 [Abstract]  
• Gammon, D, Christiansen, E K, Wynn, R (2009). Exploring morally relevant issues facing families in their decisions to monitor the health-related behaviours of loved ones. J. Med. Ethics 35: 424-428 [Abstract] [Full text]  
• Coiera, E., Braithwaite, J. (2009). Debating market-based control for patient safety: response to commentaries. Qual Saf Health Care 18: 90-91 [Full text]  
• Barber, N., Cornford, T., Klecun, E. (2007). Qualitative evaluation of an electronic prescribing and administration system. Qual Saf Health Care 16: 271-278 [Abstract] [Full text]  
• Linder, J. A., Ma, J., Bates, D. W., Middleton, B., Stafford, R. S. (2007). Electronic Health Record Use and the Quality of Ambulatory Care in the United States. Arch Intern Med 167: 1400-1405 [Abstract] [Full text]  
• Scott, I. (2007). The evolving science of translating research evidence into clinical practice. Evid. Based Med. 12: 4-7 [Full text]  
• Kim, G. R., Chen, A. R., Arceci, R. J., Mitchell, S. H., Kokoszka, K. M., Daniel, D., Lehmann, C. U. (2006). Error Reduction in Pediatric Chemotherapy: Computerized Order Entry and Failure Modes and Effects Analysis. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 160: 495-498 [Abstract] [Full text]  
• Westbrook, J I, Georgiou, A, Dimos, A, Germanos, T (2006). Computerised pathology test order entry reduces laboratory turnaround times and influences tests ordered by hospital clinicians: a controlled before and after study. J. Clin. Pathol. 59: 533-536 [Abstract] [Full text]  
• Sintchenko, V., Iredell, J. R., Gilbert, G. L., Coiera, E. (2005). Handheld Computer-based Decision Support Reduces Patient Length of Stay and Antibiotic Prescribing in Critical Care. J. Am. Med. Inform. Assoc. 12: 398-402 [Abstract] [Full text]  

Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

Health systems in 2020!

Dr. Naseem A. Qureshi, MD, IMAPA, LMIPS
bmj.com, 20 May 2004 [Full text]

Education for All

susanne McCabe
bmj.com, 21 May 2004 [Full text]

Online poll

Find out more on doc2doc >>