Cross-occupational invasion of medicine by IT, exemplified

I have written on these pages about a cross-occupational invasion of medicine by IT personnel, wherein the IT personnel seem to forget that they are facilitators of healthcare, not enablers, with a primary purpose of serving the needs of clinicians.

The HISTalk site recently posted an attorney's views on the "hold harmless" and "defects nondisclosure" controversy first reported on by Koppel and Kreda in JAMA, and amplified in my letter to the editor in the same publication. The attorney's views at HISTalk (link below) are quite reasonable regarding such practices.

However, the user comments thread reveals some attitudes exemplifying the "invasion" of which I've written. Both the attorney's post and the responses by a poster under the nom-de-blog "Programmer" to others' concerns can be read at this link.

Read it all. The attitudes of "Programmer" (assuming they are genuine, which is likely) are remarkable.

-- SS