A few years ago, a friend invited me to visit the famous Karolinska Institutet Hospital in Stockholm (that's the one where the Nobel Prize is awarded). The Swedish hospital was by then much more computerized than the Polish hospital where I work, but the experience was instructive. Well, just at the time of my visit, the computer system went down. Doctors were running around like drunken cats in a fog trying to figure out what they were supposed to do and in relation to whom. Patients sitting in the waiting room were taking out some papers from their bags, and this rudimentary documentation of theirs was often the only help in getting them help in turn.
Every once in a while, an unknown patient comes to me directly at the hospital and asks for help. Usually he is right because he is in a life-threatening situation. But he has no e-referral on his phone. He only has a disease. And it's not in my computer. It's not in the system. I don't have the authority to put him in the system.
A few years ago, the daughter of a patient: "lawyer" wrote a complaint against me. The point was that her father complained that during the visit I was mainly looking at the computer and not at him. I was looking because on the one hand I had to take notes on what he was telling me, and on the other hand I had to read the lab results. If I had missed an abnormality here it could have cost the patient his life. And finally, I had to give orders. And still the system was "hanging up". Ninety percent of the time of the visit I had to devote to the computer, not to a human being, to serve that human being.
Suddenly, IT specialists became the most important in the hospital, because what's the use of even the smartest medical professor if the system doesn't work? On the other hand, even the most efficient IT system will not help the patient.
The title of this post alludes to tragedy, and this is not unintentional. Exclusive reliance on technology that depends on constant supervision by specialists and a supply of energy can also cause tragedy in the event of failure.
