Post subject: Hospitals to go digital

US government is pushing hospitals and doctors to go digital; we mentioned about the government's effort to make health report available online in this forum, and taking hospitals and doctors to digital world is basically the larger longer term goal. Ever since the invention of the internet, this is one of the most talked about projects, but virtually nothing is implemented to reach this grand vision. It will be many years until we see full scale digital healthcare system, but I'd like us to follow up on topics related to this.

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I believe this will probably be implemented at some point, but one concern I have is the cost. I'm a little concerned that the system will be implemented so that you'll need to spend a lot of money to get the full benefit. If that happens, it will be nothing but disaster.

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I think in general this will be a good thing, assuming all these systems work together properly. Doctors should be able to look up your medical history with ease. I'm a bit worried about privacy concerns though; this could be disasterous in the wrong hands.

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ELIMINATE PAPER - SAVE TREES - GO GREEN. Many doctors offices are already doing tihs. hospitals need to catch up.

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I don't know if it's actually more environmentally friendly, considering it will require a lot more electricity to run the computers then it did to write or type everything on paper. But hopefully with improvements in computer energy efficiency (and, dare I hope, sustainable energy sources) that won't be so much of an issue.

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everything about using computers saves trees, and we need the trees

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Its a good idea unless of course a "Y2K" thing happened, LOL.

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thankfully we are past that crap and hopefully everyone is doing ongoing and regular backups