About ten years ago an important committee recommendation from the American Heart Association came out to endorse the switch to automated defibrillators in hospitals taking out the "human" variability. It was done on a hunch that these new devices would make their use speedier. The problem is that evidence now shows that they save fewer lives. It seems the decision by the brilliant experts was made without clinical research answering a crucial question: Did the new devices, when used in hospitals, produce better results than the old equipment? Huh, seems like a valid question. Now, a 1000 more patients die every year. Interestingly enough, a quarter of the members of the heart association committee that recommended the automated defibrillators had business ties with manufacturers of the devices. Pathetic.
In my humble opinion, there are too many chiefs wanting to make the big decisions to justify their salaries. Regardless of whether these members were paid off, it bothers me that any new technology is just assumed to be better than what humans can do. Isn't this really the trend we are seeing in all of medicine? Idiotic and overpaid administrators, which are multiplying as we speak, want to get rid of the doctors and bring in the computers. This AED example is just the kind of thing that happens when you do that.
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