“Konopka said she wonders if her license was in part taken away because of her inability and unwillingness to use technology to diagnose her patients or log her patients’ prescriptions as part of New Hampshire’s mandatory electronic drug monitoring program…   …She said modern medicine encourages doctors to use electronic records to diagnose patients. But Konopka said she does not want to learn how, as she feels she is experienced enough to diagnose a patient by examining them and talking to them”

What a shame that provision wasn’t made to help this long serving Doctor retain her license. Surely there was some way to help her transition into a medical education teaching role if the lack of interest in using a computer was a deal breaker.

I think it’s also an interesting story because it makes it quite odd that we still don’t require Doctors to use a computer in their medical exams and that although there is 50 years of published evidence suggesting it’s valuable most Doctors aren’t yet enabling their Patients to use computers to communicate with them before they visit their office (often as little more than a complete stranger).