Amazon healthcare exec: Doctors hate computers

As technology continues to disrupt the healthcare space and advance care, doctors are increasingly seeing issues with more screen time and less face time with patients, according to Atul Gawande, the CEO of Amazon’s healthcare joint venture with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase.

Gawande penned an editorial for The New Yorker making the case that keeping healthcare facilities technologically up to date is taking doctors away from their primary responsibility of caring for patients. Instead, they are spending hours in mandatory training on electronic medical records that promise to facilitate better care, but create a new problem of burnout among clinicians.

“Something’s gone terribly wrong,” Gawande wrote. “... Somehow we’ve reached a point where people in the medical profession actively, viscerally, volubly hate their computers.”

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Amy Baxter

Amy joined TriMed Media as a Senior Writer for HealthExec after covering home care for three years. When not writing about all things healthcare, she fulfills her lifelong dream of becoming a pirate by sailing in regattas and enjoying rum. Fun fact: she sailed 333 miles across Lake Michigan in the Chicago Yacht Club "Race to Mackinac."

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