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  • The Digital Doctor

  • Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine's Computer Age
  • By: Robert Wachter
  • Narrated by: Benjamin Wachter
  • Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (40 ratings)
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The Digital Doctor

By: Robert Wachter
Narrated by: Benjamin Wachter
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Summary

While modern medicine produces miracles, it also delivers care that is too often unsafe, unreliable, unsatisfying, and impossibly expensive. For the past few decades, technology has been touted as the cure for all of healthcare's ills. But medicine stubbornly resisted computerization - until now. Over the past five years, thanks largely to billions of dollars in federal incentives, health care has finally gone digital.

Yet once clinicians started using computers to actually deliver care, it dawned on them that something was deeply wrong. Why were doctors no longer making eye contact with their patients? How could one of America's leading hospitals give a teenager a 39-fold overdose of a common antibiotic, despite a state-of-the-art computerized prescribing system? How could a recruiting ad for physicians tout the absence of an electronic medical record as a major selling point?

Logically enough, we've pinned the problems on clunky software, flawed implementations, absurd regulations, and bad karma. It was all of those things, but it was also something far more complicated...and far more interesting.

The Digital Doctor examines health care at the dawn of its computer age. It tackles the hard questions, from how technology is changing care at the bedside to whether government intervention has been useful or destructive, and it does so with clarity, insight, humor, and compassion.

"We need to recognize that computers in health care don't simply replace my doctor's scrawl with Helvetica 12", writes the author Dr. Robert Wachter. "Instead, they transform the work, the people who do it, and their relationships with each other and with patients.... Sure, we should have thought of this sooner. But it's not too late to get it right."

This riveting audiobook offers the prescription for getting it right.

©2015 Robert Wachter (P)2015 Robert Wachter

What listeners say about The Digital Doctor

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Watcher report

When I heard that prof watcher was due to report on how the NHS should go paperless by 2020 I found this book I thought it would give me an insight into the issue that would be risen. I found it an insightful reflection into the issue that American had when quickly adopting electronic medical records - mainly aided by government funding. Some of the issues were unsurprisingly and others very educational. all is told in a simplistic style with great examples. I recommend this to anyone who cares about how IT is implemented within the NHS in the next 10 years.

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Education and entertainment

A really good listen with lots of food for thought. I have recommended this book to others as despite it being US focussed it’s a wee gem

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Excellent...relating to a fellow human will endure

Excellent...the need to relate to a fellow human will almost certainly endure after IT automation.

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EPR....

If you're thinking of Hospital wide EPR then read this first , patient comes first always

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A Must Read !

A must read for anyone who is an advocate for, or opponent of, the digitisation of medicine.

Truthful, insightful and realistic.

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