Julian Le Vay: Thoughts on Government
  • Articles
  • About
  • Contact
  • Books
    • Competition for Prisons
  • Articles
  • About
  • Contact
  • Books
    • Competition for Prisons

Why Doctors Hate Their Computers

26/11/2018

0 Comments

 
Best account I've read of exactly how a brave new all-signing, all-dancing new computer system can prove both a blessing and a curse. This is by a doctor, user/victim of a big new a system recently implemented in his healthcare group in the USA. At one and the same time, the system both saves users lots of time and consumes lots of their time, enables them to do so much more and makes it impossible to do their job properly, saves money and costs money.
It is particularly good on the work-arounds that users evolve in self-defence and how these may work, or make things worse. (In this case, a supposedly labour-saving computer system ends up causing each doctor to hire an assistant to use it – but it still probably a net benefit, even though some of the benefits are impossible to access, because of unintended side effects.)
To his credit, this is not a standard oh-god-what-idiot-designed-this! rant: it is more intelligent than that, conceding that it was right to change the status quo, and open to the idea that (some of) the nuisance he experiences might have been be necessary, even beneficial. This is a more helpful way to think about the benefits and disbenefits of computer projects than condemning systems as 'failures' for not having exactly the benefits that were promised.

And, maybe, not just computers.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/12/why-doctors-hate-their-computers



p
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    I was formerly Finance Director of the Prison Service and then Director of the National Offender Management Service responsible for competition. I also worked in the NHS and an IT company. I later worked for two outsourcing companies.

    Now retired, I write about criminal justice policy (or the lack of it), cultivate our allotment and make glass.

    Archives

    October 2020
    September 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016

    Categories

    Criminal justice
    EU referendum
    Politics

    All
    EU
    Justin Russell
    Outsourcing
    Prison
    Privatisation
    Probation
    Rory Stewart

    Click below to receive regular updates

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly