Probing the medical mind

Why is the health care industry so resistant to information technology?

Medical errors kill more people per year than breast cancer, AIDS, or motor vehicle accidents. According to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, between 44,000 and 98,000 Americans die from medical errors each year. From filling the wrong prescriptions to performing the wrong surgeries, everyone has heard a horror story-or had a personal experience with medical mishaps.

In an effort to better understand and reduce these errors, a team of researchers and practitioners have joined together to investigate how the adoption of information technology can be used to improve patient care.

With nearly $1 million in funding from the National Science Foundation, Sonja Wiley-Patton, assistant professor of information systems and decision sciences in LSU's E.J. Ourso College of Business Administration, and her team have begun a 36-month study that will examine why health care professionals are resistant to using information technology in clinical processes-especially when the use of information technology has been proven to reduce medical errors.

"We want to understand what organizational, financial, and even psychological barriers doctors and other health professionals are facing when it comes to technology," says Wiley-Patton.

Drug prescription is one area on which technology can have a significant impact. Current technology allows for electronic submission of prescriptions to pharmacies, which helps to reduce the chance a pharmacist may misunderstand illegible handwriting on drug prescription slips.

New programs, like the Computerized Physician Order Entry system, are helping to bring health care into the future, but most doctors' offices and hospitals are reluctant to purchase the technology because of high pricing by vendors. Because there are currently no national standards and regulations for medical technology, vendors are able to continue creating updated applications after the first purchase, forcing doctors to spend more money on technology that could be useless if not updated.

Cost barriers aren't the only obstacles doctors face when integrating technology into hospitals and offices. Some psychological barriers could exist. For this reason, Wiley-Patton's team also includes department of psychology professors Sean Lane and Bob Mathews, who are also co-directors of LSU's Office of Human and Machine Cognition, as well as Andrea Houston, associate professor of ISDS in LSU's Ourso College, and Dr. Stephanie Mills, a physician at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, which is serving as the primary test site for the study.

"Doctors interact closely with patients, so they like to heal and touch. There is a sense of closeness, and it's possible they psychologically don't like technology because they feel technology is cold. We will explore these issues as well," says Wiley-Patton.

Combating a reluctance to embrace technology is not easy, so Wiley-Patton is taking what she calls a "change agent" and technology "champion" approach to the problem. The method allows her team to identify a local leader in medicine who they can eventually persuade to adopt technology, hoping that others will follow suit.

"Several doctors have been hesitant to use the tablet PC, but we introduced it to them and once they tried the new technology, they learned to love it," says Wiley-Patton. "Once convinced of its usefulness, the technology brings out a feeling similar to receiving a new toy at Christmas."

Wiley-Patton and her team are extremely aware of the learning curve many of us face when it comes to new technology. That's why she and a small team of students are working one-on-one with doctors at Our Lady of the Lake on how to use new technologies like tablet PCs. They also conduct workshops to gauge doctors' intent to use the technology and their learning progress.

What they learn from this study could pave the way for adoption of other medical technologies such as online documentation, surgery protocols, and biometric security devices, which include thumbprint and iris scan capabilities. According to Wiley-Patton, these technologies could cut the time patients spend in a hospital bed in half.

As she says, "Getting home sooner after illness is a goal we all can look forward to."