Justin Shenk

Yes! Exactly. More on this later.

optical communicationsABSTRACT: Medical practice lacks a foundation in scientific behavior corresponding to its foundation in scientific knowledge. The missing foundation involves standards of care to govern how practitioners manage clinical information. These standards of care, roughly analogous to accounting standards for managing financial information, are essential to exploit the enormous potential of health information technology. Moreover, without these standards and corresponding information tools, evidence-based medicine in its current form is unworkable. Medical practice has failed to adopt the necessary standards and tools, because its historical development has diverged from the paths taken in the domains of science and commerce. The culture of medicine tolerates unnecessary dependence on the personal intellects of practitioners. This dependence has blocked the use of potent information tools, and isolated medicine from forces of feedback and accountability, that operate in the domains of science and commerce. If the necessary standards and tools are adopted, health care cost and quality could become an arena of continuous improvement, rather than a quagmire of intractable dilemmas.

via The Health Care Blog: Medicine’s Missing Foundation for Health Care Reform.