BARCELONA, SPAIN – (HealthTech Wire / News) – The IT revolution in healthcare is in full swing. But it is not without its risks, and careful assessment of projects and thorough consideration of the impact on healthcare professionals and organizations are a must.
“Like Antonio Gaudi, who envisioned the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, we have embarked on a very large project,” said Professor Enrico Coiera, head of the Centre for Health informatics at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, in his keynote speech at the European ehealth Conference in Barcelona. “And like Antonio Gaudi, we have only a vague idea about the final design of our vision.”
Such vagueness has been inevitable and, in fact, helpful, Coiera argued, since it leaves scope for adaption. But he also warned that health IT was facing a “dangerous decade” by the end of which IT solutions will have penetrated most of healthcare – with all of the accompanying benefits and risks.
“One important strategic risk that I see is IT safety,” Coiera said. He predicted that system failures that threatened patients’ lives would occur sooner or later. “We will probably be unable to avoid this completely, but we should do everything possible to minimize the risk.” In particular, he called for the routine monitoring of IT-related safety risks and for the development and monitoring of standards in the fields of interoperability, quality of implementation, service levels and user skills.
Coiera also cautioned against too high expectations when it came to the benefts of IT solutions. The results most people have in mind tend to come from centers of excellence, he said. “The effects of generic IT solutions in normal hospitals will be less profound.” He also questioned whether the “EHR first” strategy seen in many countries at the moment was the right approach for the digitization of healthcare. “By solving complex problems first there is a risk that we will miss easy ways to demonstrate success at an early stage.”
Josep Piqué, Vice-Director of the Hospital Clinic in Barcelona, stressed that the “big decade ahead” (Coiera) will not only have to provide answers to IT problems; the way health professionals work and the way healthcare organizations are structured will be affected by the digitization of healthcare. “What we need to develop is a process-oriented, multi-disciplinary working culture. And we should also start to think about pay-for-performance models of reimbursement.”
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