Plain and simple, most medical professionals are dusty old farts when it comes to the Internet and modern technology.
You know: what everyone else is using to learn and talk about current events, their health, their job prospects, their friends and coworkers…the latest developments in their respective fields…
The critical stuff.
Health and Human Services Director, Michael Leavitt, recently put it like this:
It’s obvious that the medical establishment has yet to complete the jump to the Internet Age. Our health care system has fallen behind every sector of our economy, from car repairs to manufacturing to air travel, for no good reason. There’s something wrong when you can walk away from a bank or mechanic with a detailed, easy-to-read printout but, when it comes to your health, you’re left hoping the pharmacist can make out the doctor’s handwriting.
He was referring specifically to the lack of EMR adoption in 90% of doctors’ offices, but the problem goes way beyond that. For the vast majority of American physicians, it’s an Internet mindset problem of epidemic proportions.
If you’re reading this, you’re by definition ahead of 99% of our profession. You know what a blog is, what an EMR can do, and you’re possibly even familiar with terms like RSS, social networking, and New Media.
Even if you’re not fully on EMR just yet, you likely communicate via email, use computers in your daily personal life, and garner information about The World via online news services or feed readers.
Many of our colleagues — you don’t want to know how many — still think of the Internet as a collection of fancy, online Smith Corona typewriters, and EMR as one of those fancy typewriters off in a room somewhere. If this vaguely sounds familiar, please note: this way of thinking was the vogue about 20 years ago.
Check out the following YouTube video, and compare your tech competence to some savvy power users. Only, this isn’t about how businessmen in Belgium communicate and think via the Internet, or surgical chiefs in Hanover, or even Silicon Valley geeks.
It’s about how typical American college students — the cream of the world’s crop, the pinnacle of human intellectual development — have integrated the Internet, social media, and computer technology in general into every aspect of their lives, of which studying is (still) a small part.
Sobering, yes?
