The limits of technology; Far from a panacea, IT is merely a tool for solving problems.

Byline: Susan Horn

A new study in the American Journal of Managed Care dashes hopes that hot-ticket information technologies such as computerized physician order entry will revolutionize everyday clinical care. The report, by Ted Palen of Colorado Permanente Medical Group in Denver and colleagues, finds that CPOE did not improve physician compliance with laboratory monitoring alert recommendations in a group-model, managed-care organization.

So it appears that the technology many of us had hoped would reduce medical errors and help improve care in other ways is at best immature and perhaps deeply flawed. Palen's study is not the first to suggest shortcomings in CPOE: A 2005 investigation by Ross Koppel of the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine identified 22 situations in which a …