Computer health records have problems, too

Re: “A new respect for electronic records,” column, July 21. Lawrie McFarlane confuses two distinct issues. Having records stored in a computer-accessible digital format can be helpful. It can also help them get written to a thumb drive or optical disk and sent or emailed to the wrong address very quickly or accessed by a hacker.

The separate issue is whether the particular Island Health IHealth attempt at an electronic records solution is apt or safe. As a database administrator, I can assure you that having more copies of the same data is a recipe for error and other inconsistencies. Back in the 1970s, database solutions were sold as a way of eliminating data redundancy and inconsistency. That goal seems forgotten today.

Having medical images stored electronically avoids the issue of private imaging clinics having to store plastic film images, and their chance to charge a fee every time an image is physically retrieved and accessed by courier.

The decision to have a separate IHealth prescription registry, rather than using the provincewide Pharmanet registry, seems surprising at first glance.

As a patient of both the B.C. Renal Agency and the B.C. Cancer Agency, I get medication prescribed by both. A recent renal-agency current-medication computer printout did not list my cancer-agency medications.

It also showed one of the prescriptions as daily when it should have shown weekly. Computers and applications with design and data errors and user-interface issues are not necessarily a better solution than paper files.

To err is human, but to really mess things up takes a computer. Kelly Manning Saanich