Technology Support for Evidence-based Medicine

I recently attended our local Health TechNet meeting, run by David Main in Virginia, where Dr. Joseph Bormel of QuadraMed presented his thoughts on Evidence-based Medicine. I found the talk englighting but the conversation in the meeting (where there were nurses, physicians, and other practitioners present) even more enlightening. My pet peeve about evidence-based medicine is that most of us concentrate on the reasons why it’s hard and how we can’t get consensus on many important decisions (which is true). However, because we spend so much time thinking about why it’s hard and how it’s difficult to get agreement we forget to actually start our projects and try to gain experience with it. Dr. Bormel was kind enough to give me permission to post his presentation online so here it is.