The hospital I am sitting in has had had multi-millions spent on it in the past 10 years. There are shiny new wards and smart new beds, flat screen tv for my daughter to watch and impressive portable technology that can scan, monitor and measure [but not weigh - that one is broken] at the flick of a switch.
So can someone tell me why it took 3 hours for notes to follow her from A&E to the ward which meant tests were delayed until the next day; why the Consultant couldn't access previous blood test results processed by the in-house lab; and why I've had to fill in her details 4 times? Ok, so I know the answer. IT. Lack of. It's just so incredible that we are still relying on paper records and the IT records that are in place are either partial or inaccessible to different departments all or some of the time.
Not only would electronic records improve efficiency all round, they are an essential component of affordable healthcare in the developing world. This is one of the key recommendations of the Rockefeller Foundation's ehealth 'Call to Action'. But while they focus on international development, we need to make rapid progress here because IT is one of the answers to the squeeze that will come on public sector spending in the years ahead. I could plug 2020health's Transformational IT Seminar on May 19th at the Royal College of Medicine with our emphasis on patient-controlled electronic records, or our international speakers including one coming from a Spanish paperless hospital. But I'll do that another time. Right now I just want the test results to come through, even on paper.
