Connected for Health: Using Electronic Health Records to Transform Care Delivery

FOREWORD

By Donald M. Berwick, MD

Health care has a serious case of techno-envy, at least when it comes to information systems. That's a paradox, since it's hard to think of any other industry—aerospace, maybe—more deeply invested in the latest-and-greatest gizmos. No sooner does a new imaging machine or fiber-optic surgery tool hit the market than the doctors line up at both the exhibit hall booth and the hospital budgeting office to get it into the picture, their requests fueled by dramatic claims of benefit to patients and contributions to efficiency. “Not being modern” ranks high among the generators of guilt among both clinicians and health care executives. Heaven forbid that we're behind the times!

So it's curious that health care has found ...