Luddite

Computer technology is incredibly wonderful but never meant to replace humanity, just as knowing about the human genome doesn't give the whole picture of who a person is.

Well, well, well, I seem like an old chap who moans and groans after getting lost in the world of computer. Of course. I am. Maybe I should explain a bit. I was talking about the good old days when I graduated from medical school and did what doctors do – dutifully reviewed the patient's history from scratch and uncovered the hidden story. I learned the ropes of asking questions because there was no computer record for me to scroll up and down frantically. Wait, how did I know my patient's previous abdominal ultrasound study results without computer? Hmm… I couldn't, unless I went down to the radiology department and combed though the cabinet of hand-written reports.

After going through the patient's story, there would be a flurry of questions about what medications were being taken before my patient's coming to the hospital. Once again, I couldn't get the answer without asking questions like, "What's the colour of your blood-thinning medication tablet? And how many brown tablets did you take every day? And, how about that small blue round tablet for slowing down your heart rate? Did you take it every morning?"

While I certainly would have mixed up one medication with another during such primitive way of deciphering, I was convinced that the current computer drug record is equally superficial.

True, the electronic medication record gives us a sense of thoroughness, but this is perhaps the most worrying effect of the technology. As the electronic medical records have been increasingly used in the hospital, we are now tempted to rush to the computer and retrieve all the answers from the screen – but not from the patient's words. Believe me, the meaningless long list of medication on the computer screen never reflects what our patients are actually taking at home. Asking questions is far more powerful than we had ever realized, when it comes to finding out the patient's real medication.