In a recent op-ed in The New York Times, Robert M. Wachter, MD, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, a patient safety guru and the author of the forthcoming book, The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age, writes about why electronic medical records and other healthcare technology have yet to wow doctors and their patients.

[See also: 12 patient safety gurus and why they matter.]

"Even in preventing medical mistakes – a central rationale for computerization – technology has let us down," Wachter writes, proceding to put forth what he calls a "jaw-dropping" example from his own hospital.

"Whopping errors and maddening changes in workflow have even led some physicians to argue that we should exhume our three-ring binders and return to a world of pen and paper," he writes.

Read his commentary here.