Your X-Ray & Your Doctor's Computer Monitor

In yesterday's blog, I discussed two physicians' abilities to display and review the same MRI, on their desktop computer monitors (and their different conclusions). On its face, this display technology seems efficient, appropriate, and without any downside.

But there is a downside, which will probably elude anyone who has not practiced medicine collaboratively with person to person discussion between two (and sometimes more) physicians reviewing an x-ray: a radiologist and the physician who ordered the study. When these physicians spend a few moments together to jointly review critical patient information (history, physical findings, lab, clinical impressions), they both benefit professionally because the study is no longer a solo cold intellectual exercise conducted in a dark room or reviewed in another country. The study becomes a source of information enriched by these physicians' collaboration. The radiologist can augment the ordering physician's clinical knowledge and skill, providing input which causes the clinician to modify his or her care of the patient.; the ordering physician can call attention to study findings that the radiologist may not have considered important but are clinically relevant.

While computer monitors on pysicians' desks may  show reports and scans, they do not provide the depth of information vital to the care of a patient with serious illness. Computer medical technology may provide the illusion of superior efficiency, but someone needs to study the real cost of  this application of non-collaborative technology..