Medical Professionalism in the New Information Age

With computerized health information receiving unprecedented government support, a group of health policy scholars analyze the intricate legal, social, and professional implications of the new technology. These essays explore how Health Information Technology (HIT) may alter relationships between physicians and patients, physicians and other providers, and physicians and their home institutions. Patient use of web-based information may undermine the traditional information monopoly that physicians have long enjoyed. New IT systems may increase physicians' legal liability and heighten expectations about transparency. Case studies on kidney transplants and maternity practices reveal the unanticipated effects, positive and negative, of patient uses of the new technology. An independent HIT profession may emerge, bringing another organized interest into the medical arena. Taken together, these investigations cast new light on the challenges and opportunities presented by HIT.

DAVID J. ROTHMAN is president of the Institute on Medicine as a Profession (IMAP) and Bernard Schoenberg Professor of Social Medicine at Columbia College of Physicians & Surgeons. His many books include Strangers at the Bedside and The Pursuit of Perfection with Sheila M. Rothman.

DAVID BLUMENTHAL is national coordinator for health information technology in the Department of Health and Human Services. When he contributed to this volume, he was director of the Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital/Partners HealthCare System and professor of health care policy and Samuel O. Thier Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.