Here’s an interesting article from MSBNC.com titled “Doctors going wireless with souped-up PDAs” (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6987913/). I think that this type of story is a win/lose account of things happening in the health industry.

On the “win” side, I’m encouraged to see increasing coverage of the use of technology in health care. I think a benefit is that this type of popular press coverage can pique interest from other physicians and may also create a type of “peer pressure” to adopt new technologies. Also, news reports tend to only report success stories, so the advantages and benefits are pressed into the mindset of the readers.

On the “bad” side, I think that there may be some unreasonable expectations that can be created because all we read are the “positives” (i.e., saves money, time, etc) without going into some of the process changes and implementation issues that most certainly had to be addressed. Also, I don’t like how proprietary software applications are profiled rather than focusing on the functionality. I suppose that this is just a reflection of how fragmented and new the field is.