Quotes from Robert Wachter

Automation does not simply supplant human activity but rather changes it, often in ways unintended and unanticipated by the designers. —Automation experts Raja Parasuraman and Dietrich Manzey, 2010

61% of physicians felt their EHR improved the quality of care they delivered to patients, but only 1 in 3 said it had improved their job satisfaction, and 1 in 5 said they would go back to paper if they could. Tellingly, the more advanced the EHR; for example, systems that offered reminders, alerts, and messaging capability, the greater the unhappiness.

the congressional ban on the universal patient identifier the single biggest failure in the history of health IT legislation.

We have Dragon dictation software', one primary doctor said, 'which you have to be careful of, because, I just dictated: "patient's prostate is bothering him" and it turned out: "patient's prostitute is bothering him.

All the technology in the world is not going to help you if it's not intuitive and if the end user can't use it.

There's a saying in aviation that the airplane of the future will no longer have two humans in the cockpit. Instead, there will be a pilot and a dog. The pilot will be there to keep the dog company. The dog will be there to bite the pilot if he tries to touch the controls.

Diagnostic errors contribute to 40,000 to 80,000 deaths per year in the United States. And reviews of malpractice cases have demonstrated that diagnostic errors are the most common

In a perverse way, we've been lucky that the current state of health IT is so woeful. It gives us the time we need to begin to sort out how to prevent such deskilling and disengagement before the computers really take over. Let's take advantage of this window before it is too late.

there is no guarantee that the time freed up by our newfound technological efficiencies will be made available for the human touch. A look at the modern history of industrial computerization would have one lay odds that this squishy stuff will be precisely what is sacrificed on the altar of productivity, particularly once every word, touch, and minute is measured, analyzed, and priced out.

I am convinced that the human side of medicine will be nurtured in the digital era only if both patients and clinicians value it and demand it.

people working collaboratively with technology are far more effective than either people or technology alone.