Cybermedicine: How Computing Empowers Doctors and Patients for Better Health Care

Rating:
Summary: Excellant Book that tells the true objective of computing
Review: Generally a good book, explains a lot about the author's history. Good points about patient empowerment. Very important points about use of e-mail in clinical settings. I'm a little more cynical about the use of direct computer-patient dialog for clinical information (One such system once told me that I was suffering from premenstral tension...it forgot to ask my sex.) Would like to have much greater focus on the future, however...incidents from the 1960's and 1970's are not all that relevant today.

Rating:
Summary: I was hoping for the memoirs of Dr Slack
Review: Like many if not most of the readers of Cybermedicine, I am not without preconception of Dr Slack and his work in medical computing. He is, I think, a more influential figure in it than an unacquainted reader would gather from his humble self-description. I would have better enjoyed the book had it been more of a history, complete with copious name-dropping, and less a prescription for the future, as Dr Slack's strengths are, I think, more evident in his accomplishments than his speculations. Nonetheless, the principles laid forth in Cybermedicine are sound, proven, and reducible to "the computer is the tool of the user, not vice-versa". The reader should be cautioned not to consider them lightly just because many of them seem obvious or out-of-date. If anything, such guidance is more needed by the technology community now than it was 20 years ago.

Rating:
Summary: I was hoping for the memoirs of Dr Slack
Review: Like many if not most of the readers of Cybermedicine, I am not without preconception of Dr Slack and his work in medical computing. He is, I think, a more influential figure in it than an unacquainted reader would gather from his humble self-description. I would have better enjoyed the book had it been more of a history, complete with copious name-dropping, and less a prescription for the future, as Dr Slack's strengths are, I think, more evident in his accomplishments than his speculations. Nonetheless, the principles laid forth in Cybermedicine are sound, proven, and reducible to "the computer is the tool of the user, not vice-versa". The reader should be cautioned not to consider them lightly just because many of them seem obvious or out-of-date. If anything, such guidance is more needed by the technology community now than it was 20 years ago.

Rating:
Summary: Excellant Book that tells the true objective of computing
Review: the book is the depiction of one dedicated doctor's experience and efforts with clinical computing. excellant in every way and brings sence to the ojective of computing and a master piece

Rating:
Summary: Good material; not constructive re: medical bureaucracy
Review: This is a book I looked forward to with much anticipation upon hearing about it. I am highly interested in the area of medical informatics, and the book gave an excellent summary of Dr. Slack's very interesting, personal experience with the introduction and advancement of computers into the field of medicine. The tone of the writing is not at all dry, and it was a very pleasurable read. I particularly enjoyed the way Dr. Slack emphasized the fact that if a system really WORKS, people will use it. Computer "literacy" and phobia are not issues if the system actually makes work easier. If a system is not adopted, then the user is not to blame, the designer is.

My one criticism of the book is that towards the last third of the book, the author writes a lot about why computers have failed at some institutions. Though my gut feeling is that much of what he writes here is true (and from the clinician's point of view, it may appear this way), this last section of th! e book was entirely too negative, and had the tone of venting anger.

The purpose of this book seems to be education, and this "demonization" of the admin definitely oversimplifies the situation, and does nothing for the reader. He reduces the problem into a lazy, self serving administrator standing in the way of the noble, idealistic clinician and engineer.

It would have been better to examine the facts of this problem a little more closely in order to see how the "self-serving" attitude of administrators might be guided towards implementing good computer systems. As I said before, I share Dr. Slack's personal regard for many administrators, but this extended venting served no purpose.

Though I have the single criticism of it, I still highly recommend the book. Dr. Slack has clearly been a pioneer in this area and has a unique perspective on computers and medicine, which he shares very well.