Andres,
even without reading it, i won't take the 1994 study very seriously, just because the interfaces that were and weren't available at that time and the general illiteration around computers then.
There might have been some improvement in interfaces during the last 10 years, but I haven't noted anything really revolutionary (unless the study referred to looked and command-line stuff).
Computer illiteracy in the north anno 1994 was probably on par with or better than the computer literacy you find in most developing countries today.
One example:
A collegue of mine (computer literate TB specialist) noted a year ago or so that she spent an average of 1.5 minutes to enter one TB patient into an electronic TB register application. The app was a bit slow when saving, but she had no problem with that 10-12 second delay because she used it to prepare the next patient folder for data entry.
Nurses with negligible IT experience, on the other hand, spent 16 minutes (typing one finger, looking for each key, etc) on capturing a similar record - AND they complained about the 10-12 second delay because their eyes were glued to the progress bar during saving....
So it's crucial to consider the applicability of various experiences and studies not only to health workers in countries where computers have penetrated deeply during the last 30 years, but also to health workers in areas with less or negligible penetration.
My guess is that a clear majority of health workers world-wide never have been systematically trained in computer use, probably not even in how to type with reasonable speed and accuracy (how many subscribers on this list type with all 10 fingers, I wonder....)
Otherwise, I've just read the last annual HIV prevalence survey (survey in November 2003) for pregnant women: On average 27.5% for South Africa, with provincial rates ranging from about 13% to 37%. Add to that the fact that UK, Canada, Australia and other countries systematically poach doctors and nurses from SA (we have over 30,000 vacant nurse positions now) - the impact on workload should be obvious.
Regards calle
Wayne Wilson wrote:
Title: Impact of computerized physician order entry on physician time. Source: Proceedings - the Annual Symposium on Computer Applications in Medical Care. :996, 1994.
-- Andres Paglayan [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ph: (505) 986-1561 Santa Fe, NM USA
Open Source is like Love. The more you share it the better it gets.
