DeeLuzon of Grandeur

Physician, heal thy technology... PLEASE

This article in the NYTimes struck me...

With all the tools available to modern medicine — the blood tests and M.R.I.'s and endoscopes — you might think that misdiagnosis has become a rare thing. But you would be wrong. Studies of autopsies have shown that doctors seriously misdiagnose fatal illnesses about 20 percent of the time. So millions of patients are being treated for the wrong disease.

As shocking as that is, the more astonishing fact may be that the rate has not really changed since the 1930's. "No improvement!" was how an article in the normally exclamation-free Journal of the American Medical Association summarized the situation.

And it goes on to discuss a British company which offers a database analysis that can pull up a list of ailments/causes to consider when dealing with a list of symptoms (the point being that it will include esoteric problems with which doctors/hospitals might not be intimately familiar).

So, here's my question.... why are Hillary and others introducing legislation to collect everyone's personal medical data (to facilitate care) instead of funding access to an existing, effective diagnostic tool like this? Everyone's so fuckin' in love with "technology" that they can't wait to spend kazillions of dollars on massive projects which will take years to implement and which probably won't work once online. As a small business owner, I tried for four years to work the kinks out of a relatively simple web-connected database (MYSQL), but it wasn't nearly as easy to build as several programmers had assured me it would be (and they never stopped billing even when they couldn't quite work things out). On the other hand, while they were building and building (but never finishing), I was able to keep the business running using much less "sophisticated" methodology which meant less automation and more personal involvement by me & my co-workers. Funny thing... once the programmers were finished and we made the massive transition, no one ever knew what was going on nearly so well nor could we actually deal with problems nearly as easily.

And we know that the government doesn't have the best record developing technology (the FBI, CIA, etc have spent millions on haf-assed systems they've opted to scrap for being insufficient to serve anyone's purpose, but for the programmers, i guess).

Sometimes, less IS more. Some Democrat ought to propose financing access to this diagnostic tool for every medical professional in the country so that the dollars spent on procedures, tests and treatments might be more efficient (not to mention better likely to help patients without torturing them physically and financially).

posted by peg @ 4:11 PM