Harvard Medical CIO backs mandatory electronic health records
Patient Safety Monitor Alert
April 27, 2005
John Halamka, Chief Information Officer of Harvard Medical School and CareGroup, backed President George Bush's demand that every hospital switch to electronic health records by the end of the decade. Halamka made his case in a Computerworld magazine column.Citing his grandmother, who died due to a preventable medical error, Halamka said the current rate of mistakes and deaths caused by poor record-keeping is too high. Switching to electronic records would create the same efficiency enjoyed by the manufacturing and financial industries.
Halamka also notes that electronic records are good business, saying hospitals could save $144 billion per year in medical costs related to injuries sustained by medical error.
To read the complete Computerworld column, click here.
