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The
computerization of general practitioners’ surgeries is increasing all
the time. The changeover, by doctors who use a computer as a work tool
compared to those who continue to use conventional paper clinical records,
is a reality: an analysis of the computer printed prescriptions reaching
chemists, shows that now there is certainly a predominance of computerized
doctors’ surgeries. Actually, one is certainly unable to claim that
all such doctors use the same computerized system.
Nowadays
the range of hardware on sale is very wide and also the opportunities
of software program application suited to the capacity and speed of
the computer used - vary considerably.
For
this reason it is impossible to comprehend the true potential of computerization
currently existing in general medicine at the present time. Nevertheless,
general practitioners in Italy must act within the limits of the rules
present in the Italian Health Service - in a Public Health Service that
go hand in hand with the elephantine legislation of our country.
Each
day laws and decrees come one after the other, loaded with articles,
paragraphs and subparagraphs and the legislation changes from day to
day. Doctors, in carrying on their profession, must be able to concentrate
on the patient, calling on their scientific knowledge and working with
utmost care. They cannot be distracted, in the highly humanitarian work
done, by a state bureaucracy which overwhelms and contaminates everything.
Naturally
under these conditions it becomes important, apart from having a computer
which can quickly and efficiently apply the extremely complex bureaucratic
legislation, to also be able to keep it updated as well as one’s own
scientific knowledge. Hence the need to combine computer use with an
internet connection, in order to provide real time updates on the rapid
progress of medical science worldwide, through web ports connected to
numerous international search engines, in addition to the need to be
connected to a software-house specializing in general medicine.
The
web port, the result of very long and complex preparation by the editorial
staff of Leadership Medica, with a telematic connection to all the most
important scientific and university organizations in five continents,
is about to burst onto the internet, known by the name of Sanitade.com
and will allow all doctors, in possession of a special identification
password, to receive constant updates on the very latest scientific
research in any branch.
Doctors
using Sanitade.com will be able
to connect to high specialization hospitals and leading experts all
over the world. It will be a flexible, but highly productive, update
tool which will allow updating precisely through the study of particular
clinical cases with the support of leading world experts. Products also
exist for daily routine software which ensure the constant updating
of programs. Still the same characteristics of the application software
are constantly updated; the fifth edition of the Medicus program has
just been released, which is also part of an extensive pilot experiment
on the smart card for Lombardy in the entire district of Lecco, but
the software-house is already preparing the sixth edition based on all
the variations of the legislation set by the last Convention on general
medicine.
Therefore
it is necessary to ascertain that the future has already started also
for general medicine and that work and updating tools now exist which
were unimaginable a few decades ago. It is just a question of knowing
how to use them correctly, always bearing in mind the maxim that the
computer should be at the service of the doctor and not the doctor at
the service of the computer.
(traduzione
Interpres sas-Giussano)
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