Physicians, Even Those Educated in IT and Informatics, Are Not "Real" IT People

I've been participating in the comment thread on the HisTALK heath IT industry news/gossip site at http://histalk2.com/2009/09/17/news-91809/ . At this time there are 40 comments - mine start at #4. (I've also archived the thread in Word format here.)

It's been quite interesting, demonstrating that many of the harmful attitudes of IT personnel about healthcare I observed more than a decade ago are still around.

An anonymous commenter under the title "Programmer" has been forthcoming with views I think are actually common in the health IT field about medicine, science, IT flaws and shortcomings, and physician involvement in HIT. I will let you read them for yourself at the above link.

Others have indicated in that comment thread and other threads that "Programmer" is an executive with a large HIT company, but I cannot confirm this.

Among other stunning views, this commenter exhibited:

• Serious errors in logic such as repeatedly and unshakably mistaking well-documented reports about known rates of IT project failure as a condemnation that all IT projects fail, perhaps reflecting a state of denial;
  
• Lack of understanding that in scientific fields such as biomedicine, conclusions generally should be supported by reasonable evidence, not "because I think so";
  
• Lack of understanding and dismissal of the value of the peer reviewed scientific literature on health IT, and further, a seeming inability or unwillingness to peruse the "references" section of scientific articles, a profoundly unscientific approach to the world;
  
• Dismissal of the written views of organizations such as the Joint Commission, US National Research Council, European Federation for Medical Informatics and others on HIT deficiencies;
  
• Perhaps most harmfully, dismissal of faulty conceptual and physical data models, inadequate workflow and cognitive support, and IT of poor user interaction design that presents a mission hostile user experience as a real problem in critical care areas such as Invasive Cardiology (specifically, in this case). Instead, this IT person dismissed physician dismay and rejection of such ill-designed and profoundly unusable IT as a mere "pissing contest" between IT and clinicians, consistent with narrow, territorial, paternalistic, indeed autocratic IT-centric views and a reversal of enabler (clinician) vs. facilitator (IT service provision) roles in patient care.

"Programmer" also attacks (from the perspective of arrogant ignorance) the "Health IT Project Success and Failure: Recommendations from Literature and an AMIA Workshop" white paper drawing together the thinking at a workshop attended by over fifty informatics experts from all areas of medicine and technology. The role of the medical informatics expert itself, and other issues as well relating to reasons for HIT failure and difficulty are attacked and dismissed.

(If the person is a fake or "sock puppet", they're doing a mighty accurate approximation of my own uncomfortably-common observations in managing health IT and biomedical research IT projects while working with non-biomedical IT personnel, see cases here.)

The crux of the matter came out towards the end where "Programmer" maintains in Comment #28 that I am "just someone who likes to talk about IT” and he is a “real IT person.”

A "real IT person?" I've heard that before: this is the "doctors don't do things with computers" (including medical informaticists) type of comment I've heard face-to-face periodically from healthcare IT personnel since I entered the field in the early 1990's, and commented upon a decade ago here.

I've emailed Tim, the proprietor of the HISTalk site [mr_histalk AT yahoo.com], to inquire if this poster was real or just a provocateur.

Tim's response: "He's real and has been around for awhile, although lately he seems to be enjoying an escalated level of confrontation when he can create one."

I maintain -- based on personal experience and that told me by others -- that this person's views are not all that rare in the HIT vendor and hospital IS communities.

I also opine that thinking such attitudes can be dealt with by logical argument and persuasion is a belief itself lacking in rigor.

IT personnel of views as in the HisTALK comments thread represent an older culture of data processing, dating from the days of card punch tabulators that ran businesses prior to computers. It is a culture that has failed to mature with the times.

As I wrote here, the unimaginative, process over results, tight fisted control, bureaucratic data-processing culture of the business IT (management information systems) world is the lineal descendant of IBM's patchcord plug-panel programmed, card tabulating machines from which IBM made a large portion of their profit in the days before the electronic computer:

Hollerith Type III Tabulator with its control panel exposed. Photo: MNRAS, Vol.92, No.7 (1932). Click to enlarge.

Fortunately, such personnel and their designer-centric, as opposed to user- and work-centric philosophies are starting to become obsolete. This can be observed (as an example) via the mission of the iSchool consortium, of which my organization, the Drexel College of Information Science and Technology, is a member:

The iSchools are interested in the relationship between information, people and technology. This is characterized by a commitment to learning and understanding the role of information in human endeavors. The iSchools take it as given that expertise in all forms of information is required for progress in science, business, education, and culture. This expertise must include understanding of the uses and users of information, as well as information technologies and their applications. [the order of these priorities is pertinent - ed.]

Unfortunately, the data processing culture and its adherents are not becoming obsolete quite fast enough. There are still too many in the upper echelons of management, including health IT vendors, hospitals and pharmaceutical R&D environments.

Finally, IT personnel with such attitudes as displayed in the comments, from the lowliest programmer to the CEO and Board, have no place anywhere near where patient care is conducted, or where information systems serving clinical medicine are designed and built.

In line with other character types one encounters in healthcare that are often discussed on Healthcare Renewal, clinicians should not accommodate such IT personnel and these types of views.

-- SS

Addendum:

The final (at this time) comment, #40, left by the above commenter states:

#40 Programmer: If I decide to become a medical informatproctolicist, I’m going to specialize in sardonicology.

IT personnel of such views bring to life Lecia Barker's paper "Defensive climate in the computer science classroom":

“Defensive climate in the computer science classroom” by Barker et al., Univ. of Denver. Link here (subscription required). May help explain the control-seeking culture of IT personnel. As part of an NSF-funded IT workforce grant, the authors conducted ethnographic research to provide deep understanding of the learning environment of computer science classrooms. Categories emerging from data analysis included 1) impersonal environment and guarded behavior; and 2) the creation and maintenance of informal hierarchy resulting in competitive behaviors. These communication patterns lead to a defensive climate, characterized by competitiveness rather cooperation, judgments about others, superiority, and neutrality rather than empathy.

-- SS