New connections between medical knowledge and patient care

摘要

1. Medicine lacks an information infrastructure to efficiently connect those who produce and archive medical knowledge to those who must apply that knowledge 2. There are serious "voltage drops" along the transmission line for medical knowledge in the present healthcare system 3. Good medical practice requires tools to extend the human mind's limited capacity to recall and process large numbers of relevant variables 4. Knowledge should be held in tools that are kept up to date and used routinely-not in heads, which are expensive to load and faulty in the retention and processing of knowledge 5. Such information tools would allow fundamental changes in our approach to medical education 6. The tools would also allow a defined and consistent approach for controlling and keeping track of inputs to the healthcare system, which in turn would enable outputs to be properly interpreted and corrective feedback loops to be used routinely.