Ahmad Risk wrote:
>
> On Sun, 12 Jul 1998 09:45:15 +0100, Katie Law wrote:
>
> >* our training and exams in med school give us the tendency to feel good
> >about storing masses of information in our brains, but is this the best
> >place - are not computers infinitely better at recall than brains ;-)
>
> No. Computers are only better at number crunching. Show me the
> computer that will beat my brain in terms of instructions per second
> processing visual, aural, verbal and non verbal clues and arrive at
> the *right* decision all whilst still maintaining eye contact with the
> patient and writing a mental shopping list for the trip to Tesco later
> that afternoon.
>
You are quite right, the domains of competence of computers and brains are
quite distinct. However, most computers are not used for number crunching,
they're used for process control (in washing machines and so on), or for
recording and storing data (eg emails, letters, GP notes).
Computers are great at recalling information *reliably* - much better than
humans are. However, humans are much better at deciding what information
is relevant. I guess that patients are not good at recalling details of
their medical histories (like drug name, dates of immmunisations, etc).
I suppose the reasons for having electronic patient records are the same
as the reasons that GPs keep notes at all. The advantage of EPR is that
the notes are more easily accessible in emergencies and so on.
Even paper notes can be scanned without difficulty if you have the right
equipment.
--
cheers, Ian Eiloart
<http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/iane>
<http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/iane/coops>
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