Ok, so yeah, I wrote about how health IT helped me in my 41½ weeks of pregnancy. But I had no idea what a strong part it would play in the actual birth of my son (and in case you were wondering, yes, he is the most beautiful baby on the planet). First, there was the computer monitoring my contractions, heartbeat, and the baby’s heartbeat starting from the moment I walked in to the labor and delivery room to begin the 12-hour-induction, onto the three hours of pushing, until being wheeled into the operating room for a C-section. Then, there were the machines in the OR and the recovery room that alerted clinicians that my pressure was too low and my heart was too fast. And while I’m pretty sure health IT wasn’t crucial in knowing that I’d lost a lot of blood during the surgery, I know that it was instrumental in comparing my blood pre-partum to postpartum to decide if I needed a transfusion. (I didn’t.) And while I’m grateful I don’t live in the Middle Ages (and that I do in New York City), and happy that my clinicians had what looked to me to be the latest equipment, I had the utmost confidence in my physician, and cared more about where she was employed than about what software she was employing.
