Internet, smartphone, tablets… In town or in hospital, doctors are well equipped and use digital tools in their daily practice.
The time for the computerization of doctors and the switch to the teletransmission of treatment sheets by the SESAM-Vitale network seems a long way off. Forgotten about the protest against this forced digitization at the end of the 1990s. Doctors have now entered the digital age, and the figures of an IPSOS survey for the French digital health agency (Asip Santé) confirm it.
Liberals are more than 95% to have computer software for the management of patients, and 94% of general practitioners use it on a daily basis (against “only” 87% of specialists). Medical records, remote transmission of treatment sheets, administrative management, printing of prescriptions… The advantages of digital technology seem to have convinced them. They see in particular benefits for the care pathway (89%), but also, to a lesser extent, for the organization of work, treatment and quality of care.
Ipsos survey for Asip health
Digital services allow them to reduce the redundancy of certain medical examinations and procedures, improve cooperation between the city and the hospital, or even facilitate the reporting of possible adverse drug reactions.
DPI works
Doctors use their computers, or even their tablets and smartphones on the go. More than one in ten hospitals can thus access the Computerized Patient Record (DPI) remotely. He is also well established in French hospitals. Nine out of ten practitioners say that their establishment is equipped so that they can access it. But this is not the only service they favor.
Hospitals and independent professionals alike use medical information sites (99%), secure health messaging (86%), or diagnostic and prescription tools (91%). They also communicate by email with their colleagues to access analysis results, transmit patient health data and, in return, follow the conclusions of other doctors, or even to seek advice on specific cases.
They are also one in two to report practicing telemedicine, even rarely. Proof that doctors are not limited to web 1.0 use, but are present in web 2.0, the social web. They even seem ready for Web 3.0, that of objects: six out of ten use patient service applications and connected objects. They also say they are ready, for 40% of them, to make more use of digital technologies.
Supportive, but vigilant doctors
The results drawn by the investigation seem idyllic, but doctors nevertheless express reservations. If they are globally interested, and at ease, with the digital evolution of their profession, they are almost 40% to declare themselves worried about the impact that it could represent for medicine. They are particularly concerned about the change in the nature of relations with their patients, which could deteriorate, and promote dehumanization (40% of general practitioners and 44% of specialists).
But not only. The breach of confidentiality, the leakage of data on the health of their patients, represents for them a risk inherent in digital technologies in medical practice. They also fear that unequal access to health care will translate into unequal access to health care.
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