Promises, promises

It’s easy to think that there is no problem facing medicine that information technology can’t solve. Experience in the US gives little reason for optimism. Huge investments have mostly failed to solve old problems and have created new ones. US doctors report spending two hours on computer tasks for every hour with patients (doi:10.7326/M16-0961). Poor usability and limited interoperability of electronic health records are a major source of professional unhappiness and burnout.

Despite this cautionary tale, the NHS has decided …