Using medical technology wisely
The infrastructure is now in place to use new informational technologies in the American health care system effectively. But a former White House official tasked with improving health care technologies said the challenge is to ensure that innovations do not deepen existing disparities in health care, and instead provide care more effectively across communities. David Blumenthal, who until last month was national coordinator for health information technology, outlined the potential and the pitfalls of additions such as electronic health records as part of the Reede Scholars’ Second Annual Health Equity Symposium on May 12. His was “not a program about technology, although health technology is in the title; this is a program about health care,” said Blumenthal, the Samuel O. Thier Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, during the program on “eEquity: Leveraging Technology to Achieve Health Equity.” “It operates under the assumption that information is the lifeblood of medicine and that...