Computerized encounter registers in primary care research: Is there a gold standard?
✍ Scribed by Howard Brody
- Publisher
- Springer Netherlands
- Year
- 1988
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 870 KB
- Volume
- 9
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1573-1200
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Computer technology as well as the need to conduct research in primary care settings, has stimulated the creation in the U.S. of information networks linking private physicians' offices and other primary care practice sights. These networks give rise to several problems which have philosophic interest. One is a "numerator problem" created by the difficulty in primary care of using the more complicated or invasive diagnostic technologies commonly employed in tertiary care research. Another is a "denominator problem" arising fiom the difficulties in determining which and how many patients constitute the population from which a practice is drawn. Finally, this mode of research raises questions about the social construction of medical reality and how 'kobjective" medical truth is actually based on carefully selected patient experience. All these questions combine to challenge the "gold standard" view on medical research: the idea that some sorts of medical knowledge are epistemologically priviledged and can serve as a bench-mark to determine whether new data are valid.