Community member Dean Karavite posted a book review on the CHOP Bioinformatics blog Informatics 360 on the new book The History of Medical Libraries. You will want to read this book after reading Dean. He goes on and reveals some of his observations and insights into EMR and HIT application design.

Many people think that paper medical charts are hopelessly archaic. The sooner they are all scanned and shredded the better off we will all be. There is nothing worth saving from such primitive systems… or is there? As with any legacy system, is there something we can gain from studying it? If we shred our old paper charts without understanding their evolution and design will we struggle to relearn lessons in designing their electronic replacements? After all printed medical records have existed and evolved for what? Decades, a hundred years, a few centuries…?

How about 4,000 years. The History of Medical Libraries from 2000 B.C. to 1900 A.D, by Kat... is a fun read describing the history of medical information. Some of the oldest human records ever discovered are of medical descriptions on clay tablets and those records were combined and organized to form a major portion of the earliest known libraries. The people who managed these collections were held in high esteem and received impressive titles such as, “The Scribe of the Double House of Life” or “Keeper of the Sacred Books.”

Continue reading "The Scribe of the Double House of Life"