Thursday, November 01, 2012

Skynet: When the EMR Isn't Enough

It was supposed to be an initative to implement the Electronic Medical Record. 

Instead, it is quickly morphing to Skynet

Like a black hole, everything goes in to Skynet now.  Nothing escapes its gravitational pull. 

Schedules, supply chains, staffing grids, calendars, medicines, pharmacies, insurance plans, pay for performance initiatives, quality measures, door-to-balloon times, billing codes, procedure codes, everything. 

Ever-expanding. Spreading. Consuming. 

All left unchecked.

The office computer was used to be Skynet's reach, but it quickly expanded to the home computer and the cell phone, provided you're willing to have the cell phone's memory swiped clean if you leave Skynet's grasp.  Personal schedules, too, have fallen victim to Skynet as everyone's whereabouts are tracked for all to see in the name of staffing and operating efficiency.  

And this week, "personalized medicine" moved a step closer as the complete DNA material of more than 1,000 people from 14 population groups in Europe, Africa, East Asia and the Americas were sequenced so they may serve as a standard reference against which doctors could one day compare a patient's genome profile, even during a routine checkup.

Yes, more fodder for Skynet.

Eerie.

Kind of makes you wonder when we'll be terminated, doesn't it?

-Wes

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not too worried about 'when' given average lifespans for women with two risk factors, but 'how'. I cannot stand the smell of diesel mixed with ethylene oxide mixed with burned hair, or the cautery during open heart surgery. I cannot stand the sound of scraped fingernails, working dental tools, nor ilial harvest of bone marrow. But, that is not all, and I would not want to mention anything else in case Skynet is soliciting input.

Lisa said...

Beam me up Scottie!

Andrew_M_Garland said...

I suggest the EMR and its expansion is more like V.I.K.I in the 2004 film "I, Robot".

VIKI is a giant, nano-circuit computer. "She" collects all information, directs the actions of millions of robots, and decides that people must be protected from themselves and closely directed for their own good.

VIKI is the embodiment of Democrat administrations. Life will be so much better when the government is "nudging" us ever so gently in the right direction, all of the time.