Moravec’s Paradox is:
the observation by artificial intelligence and robotics researchers that, contrary to traditional assumptions, reasoning (which is high-level in humans) requires very little computation, but sensorimotor skills (comparatively low-level in humans) require enormous computational resources – Wikipedia
Rephrased, tasks which most humans find extremely difficult, such as beating a Chess Grandmaster, for AI programs—such as AlphaGo— are relatively easy; however, opening up a bottle of beer—a task must of us find simple (and enjoyable—are a huge technical challenge in AI and robotics.
I believe there is a similar paradox in current EHR technology, and I believe it is one the EHR development community has yet to face.
Simply put, EHRs make patients with complex medical problems easier to manage, but patients with simple medical problems much harder to manage.
And the end result, assuming that most patients usually have simple medical problems most of the time? Massive frustration at the clinician level.
Most of my “evidence” for this is anecdotal, and I recognize this is just my opinion—but an opinion that is grounded in having seen 40,000 patients with handwritten charts versus 60,000 patients within the EHR.
But one thing I can say with certainty: In the olden days, all we needed to manage a simple strep throat in a child was a single sheet of paper or even 3-4 written lines in a chart, and about a three-minute exam, plus/minus a strep test; but now managing a sore throat in a child can feel like inputting the launch sequence for a space shuttle!
Anyway, there are reasons for this—not the least being the voracious appetite healthcare systems have for data, gathered not so much to help a given patient, but instead to help populate EHR databases, and I don’t see this changing anytime soon.
Just keep in mind that although we may have gained something with EHR technology, we may have lost something very valuable: simplicity.