Wouldn't surprise me if they went fully robotic for some things in the not too distant future.
I'm impressed they only got the bedside one recently. My dentist just recently upgraded to direct digital sensors for their x-rays (wires to the computer in the room instead of digital plates), but the X-ray source shows decades of battle scars.
My mother is a dentist on the verge of retirement who used to fly to conferences all the time and ran a reasonably successful dental practice with about a dozen employees (and plenty of computers). She would always talk about how the new implant ceramics are not as durable as the old amalgam and they're only popular because they're white instead of gray.
If you're a medical facility that isn't digitized then you're not subject to many of the HIPAA privacy and security compliance rules. It's an exception they carved out to grandfather in older practices that weren't digitized.
Many facilities stay "analog" in that way for that explicit reason.
Source: used to be a certified HIPAA Security Officer, this was a topic at the certification seminar I attended.
Are the security requirements of HIPAA good? (genuinely wondering: your data goes to tons of organizations, any of them could use a not properly secured database and leak it. And are the requirements good both in the technology and practices, as who's accountable?)
Any data processing by a third party must be done under a Business Associate Agreement (BAA), which transfers responsibility under HIPAA with the same rules and regulations to the third party. There's always a chain of liability when processing PII, traceable back to the PCP (primary care provider).
The regulations also leave things open ended in terms of specific ciphers etc, stating "industry standard" encryption at rest and in motion (i.e. transport security) must be used, for whatever definition of industry standard is correct.
As for privacy, exfil of PII even in non-digitized establishments is still covered (hence why there is typically also a Privacy Officer appointed with a HIPAA complaint org, distinct from a Security Officer, both being actual terms and certifications being handed out by certification bodies). That covers general privacy and a much larger scope, and applies to any healthcare establishment - not just those who use computers.
Cryptographic audit trail requirements, third party audits and reviews, a slew of other software certifications (some even from the government, such as Meaningful Use), etc all exist to help with that mission.
As for who's accountable, it's always tied to the processor of the information, and "breaches", which are violations of either privacy or security policy, must be reported all the way back up the chain in a timely matter, and in the event the breach might cause risk of harm or disclosure, must also be reported to a regulatory body (I forget which), in which case the offending party must pay a fine. There's insurance for these scenarios, I forgot if it's compulsory. But it racks up fast, and IIRC you're liable in most cases for damages up to a ceiling, somewhere in the 9 figure range.
What's more is that there's also Qui Tam lawsuits which, as I understand things, can be brought against an offending healthcare establishment by a whistleblower of sorts (i.e. a third party who observes a breach, without being part of the chain of responsibility (the healthcare establishment) nor affected by the breach) on behalf of individuals harmed by said breach. As far as I know, anyone can do this.
IMO, for what it tries to do, I think it does an okay job. It's a really difficult thing to generalize and standardize given not only the flux of technology but also the fact that you still want independent innovation in the space without regulatory overreach.
(This is a massive oversimplification of my slightly outdated knowledge of this as I've been out of the US healthcare field for a while now)
It’s that the paper-using doctor can spend more time on you, the patient, instead of fighting with a balky UI and inane business rules.
I happen to work in the medical field and while a lot of the software involved has its issues, not working with software, at this point, seems like a really bad idea, in terms of error prevention, performance and efficiency.
Paper-shuffling used to be not a major issue in a doctor's work day. It was merely something that yes, sure you had to log new patient data and whatnot for reference, but you were mostly free to do the paperwork in a way that fit your natural workflow. Based on the doctors I know/knew, it was not a pain point. Yeah, you would sometimes have to fetch physical papers from somewhere instead of clicking yourself to the same information on the computer, but that was not a major issue. I'd say it was similar to a programmer who's waiting for an incremental compilation to finish: a minor moment out of actual work but nothing to fret about.
After doctors' offices got digital then interacting with the computer specifically certainly became an issue which didn't exist before. At best, it was just a clumsy way to do the inevitable and at worst it became a major part of the patient visit, with myriad of odd tricks you had to learn about some particular computer software in order to accomplish your actual goals.
If something that used to be normal part of work nobody thought twice about once become noted as a separate issue of the work day, something did change there. Sure, there are benefits too, but it's the friction points that you feel at work when you're trying to get other things done. Sure, software could be written to serve the user and not the other way around, but software rarely is -- no matter the profession, doctors aren't the only ones!
Meanwhile, I had a similar prescription, from a different specialist, who issues his prescriptions as either e-scripts or computer-generated paper scripts depending on patient preference. I suspect his practice management software would stop him from making this class of mistake entirely.
I get why a doctor might prefer to avoid the computer, but I think my relative would have preferred their doctor not screwing up on something basic and wasting a significant amount of their time over better vibes in a consult.
Theres pros and cons to both
Looking at a screen while you check through dozens of flags and billing related documentation instead of looking at the patient is much less personable.
I get that I’m ranting against healthcare and not doctors, but I’d run far from any doctor that’s paper only these days.
When I moved to New York I was surprised to find a dentist whose practice was much the same, though he did have a few computers around. He retired recently.
Computers no doubt can improve things; a lot of it seems like a no-brainer. But I'm starting to doubt that they're there to improve things.
They stopped the improvement around Win 10. Since then, everybody (Microsoft, linux, Apple - Google never had a wheel) is reinventing a worse wheel, regularly.
I never saw such passion about software.