Is it the technology or the people behind the computers?

This piece from Health Care Renewal suggests it’s the latter, or the so-called sociotechnical issues. In other words, the problem is not with the technology itself, but “inadequate planning, insufficient testing or training, failing to include front-line clinicians in the planning process, failure to consider best practices for HIT operationalization, failure to consider the costs and resources needed for ongoing maintenance, failure to consult product safety reviews or alerts or the previous experience of others, over-reliance on vendor advice, [and] failure to carefully consider the impact technology can have on care processes, workflow and safety.”

In other words, it’s the people that’s the problem.

The President-elect is prepared to infuse a significant outlay of cash into a poorly-designed and fragmented generation of digital record systems. Those who are advising him are choosing to focus on the technology issues, rather than the sociotechnical issues.

And that decision may doom us to several decades of inadequate health IT infrastructure.