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medpundit |
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Sunday, June 09, 2002"If admitted to the hospital, the patient of tomorrow will not be required to fill out elaborate forms. The use of telemedicine will allow one's whole medical record to be sent from one part of America to another within seconds. We will carry wallet-sized cards that have our latest EKG, chest x-ray, lab tests, operative reports and other critical data encoded in them. And to protect privacy we will use iris scanners - scanners that evaluate the unique features of the iris in a person's eye - to activate these cards. Patients will have diagnoses made with non-invasive scanners and most surgical repairs will be performed through laporascopic techniques using robotics. Medications will be tailored to our own genetic code and delivered safely through bar-coded systems. Billing will be processed at the time of care. Patients will know the costs and will be satisfied with the quality of care you provide, but will not be encumbered by mountains of confusing paperwork." Mighty ambitious future, there, and very cold and impersonal, too. I'm not so sure I want robots operating on me any time soon. I'd prefer a human hand directed by a human mind who can make adjustments for my body's individuality. As for that wonderful, portable, paperless system, our government is currently doing everything it can to throw up roadblocks to making that happen. In their efforts to make it possible to send information electronically about patients, they have engineered difficult to follow privacy regulations with stiff penalties for failure to follow them. That sort of thing just makes everyone more leary of using the cybersphere. It's one of the reasons so few physicians use e-mail to communicate with their patients. They're afraid they won't be able to guarantee patient confidentiality. posted by Sydney on 6/09/2002 07:34:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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