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by sofixa 1224 days ago
Vehemently disagree. Stifling progress because of the risks involved isn't worth it, the risks need to be assessed, acknowledged and accounted for.

Digitising medical info is brilliant and extremely useful for anyone involved. Handoff between practitioners is seamless, and no more of the redundant "are you allergic to anything? any priors? are you taking any meds?", because the practitioner knows everything they need to (e.g. your dentist doesn't need to have access to your therapy notes, but should probably know all meds you're taking and all previous dentistry work done on you, wherever and wherever that happened). It would also allow for country-wide anonymous statistical analysis. Oh, everyone taking pill X is also having Y? Is there a problem there? A lot of people getting operated for A used to do Z, C, so maybe we need a better educational campaign so people know the risks? The possibilities - life saving, medical system improving, etc. are enormous.

It just needs to be handled with extreme care, because the risks are enormous. Security should be top notch, with strict access controls, anonymisation where needed, etc.

1 comments

Your parent made a much narrower point than you’re debating: you argue in favor of digitizing general medical info and your parent made the point that therapy notes should be paper-only and locked. The risk/reward tradeoff is different for those than allergies, general medication etc. The information contained is much more sensitive and at the same time they’re much less likely to be passed off between therapists unfiltered and unredacted.

Both, digitizing general medical info and keeping specific bits in analog form for safety and security reasons are not mutually exclusive.

Parent said:

> Medical info should have NEVER being digitized.

Which i assumed to be talking about all medical info.

> The information contained is much more sensitive and at the same time they’re much less likely to be passed off between therapists unfiltered and unredacted.

Why not?