The broken promise of digitizing patient data

Between 2011 and 2015 the government spent upwards of $35 billion subsidizing doctors’ purchases of electronic health records (EHRs) through the Meaningful Use program. It did so mainly in the expectation that EHRs would enable doctors to provide better care for patients and streamline practice and hospital workflows. But the 2009 Health Information Technology for Clinical Health (HITECH) Act the law that spawned Meaningful Use included an additional motive for encouraging EHR use: advancing public and population health. The hope was that digitizing millions of patient health records would produce a treasure-trove of data that researchers could mine for purposes such as spotting disease outbreaks and developing new ways of treating chronic conditions. Seven years after Meaningful Use, and three years into the COVID-19 public health crisis that has claimed more than a million lives, it’s evident that the hoped-for public/population health benefits of EHRs remain unfulfilled.