Dennis Quaid Keynote Address at HIMMS – Emphasis on Technology

This is great and nice that celebrities are also speaking out. The related reading below has a history of all the past articles about Dennis McQuaid’s story and problems at the hospital, medical errors. We all have so much on our plates today, there is no way we can manually handle the workloads and not be subject to errors, the computer can do that better than a human in a much shorter length of time.

If you hang around this blog enough, there are many posts to read, not only about technology updates, but clinical and personalized medicine as well. All the elements need to come together and technology is the key to making it all work. BD

CHICAGO – Actor Dennis Quaid brought the importance of electronic prescriptions and bar-coding close to the heart with the story of the near-deaths of his newborn twins from a medical error in 2007.

Quaid, Sunday's opening keynote speaker at HIMSS09 and founder of the Quaid Foundation, said he hopes many lives will be saved as a result of his children's ordeal.

In the past few months, Quaid has testified before Congress and appeared on Oprah Winfrey's television show to promote his cause.

In a large hall filled nearly to capacity, an emotional Quaid thanked the scores of attendees "from the bottom of my heart" for their dedication to advancing health IT.

"You are the leaders and I have faith that you will lead us to a better and brighter future," Quaid said.