Medical data must graduate from cave

More than 3,000 years ago, the first forms of drug prescriptions appeared in ancient Babylon as healers carved medicines into clay tablets.

In the 21st century, modern-day healers have replaced clay tablets with paper ones, but little else has changed when it comes to prescribing medicine. It’s amazing how far we haven’t come and how much the medical and health care communities have managed to ignore, discount and otherwise avoid widespread adoption of health information technology.

In today’s world there are too many prescriptions, too many procedures, and too many variables for doctors still to be relying on paper records that cannot be readily cross-referenced, shared or accessed. Systems that share medical records, warn of drug interactions and facilitate the process of healing are absolutely necessary.

It’s a shame that many in the medical community have resisted progress, and it is unfortunate our government has not stepped in to promote implementation and adoption of health IT infrastructure and standards.

Both President Barack Obama and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary-designate Tom Daschle have committed to improving this country’s health IT infrastructure. During his Senate confirmation hearing, Daschle said that health IT needs to be “a higher priority” and that the government needs to set standards. Hopefully that is more than just talk.

There are few immediate steps that our government could realistically take that would improve the quality of care in this country and drive down the long-term cost of care. However, the mandated implementation of electronic prescriptions and electronic medical records, along with established standards to ensure communication across IT systems, is one of them.

According to a Harvard Medical School study, e-prescribing could save $845,000 a year for every 100,000 people filling prescriptions.

The Institute of Medicine has estimated that more than 1.5 million Americans are harmed annually by drug errors. E-prescriptions would greatly reduce that number and already have. A 2007 Dana-Farber Cancer Institute e-prescription pilot program helped to prevent 724 bad drug interactions or drug allergy issues.

Giving up paper isn’t enough. The best technology does not help if multiple systems cannot interact and share information. To invest in the infrastructure without mandating operating standards would be an unforgivable waste of time and money. National interoperability standards must be set down and enforced. Otherwise, the prescriptions and medical records might as well be transmitted in ancient Babylonian for all the good it will do.

The medical community must commit to investing in this infrastructure and adopting system standards, and Obama, Daschle and Congress must encourage the medical community to do so through incentives and credit programs.

We have started down this road. Industry health IT standards are now being considered as part of the economic stimulus package and Congress has already approved higher reimbursement rates for doctors who utilize e-prescriptions. But more can and should be done.

A national, standardized health IT system would drastically improve health care in this country.

As a community we have moved beyond blood letting and prescribing tonics as cure-alls. It is time that the U.S. medical community left the Stone Age behind and joined the rest of the world in the Information Age.

• Dr. Jack Lewin is CEO of the American College of Cardiology.