I’ve left the hardest issue to deal with for last- “Overemphasis on following algorithmic rules”.  This has been the most frustrating aspect of my primary care practice.  Patients quit being viewed as patients but a set of goals that I had to achieve to be smiled upon fondly by my boss as being “a good doctor”. It took me some time to finally quit playing the game and just do the best I could do and whatever the numbers were so be it.

Algorithmic medicine couldn’t be any more antithetical to EBM. Everyone is viewed the same. EBM clearly, as I have argued in the last three posts, is about individual patient values and circumstances. It’s about clinical experience temporizing what we could do to what we should do.  Algorithmic medicine allows no individuality.  No temporizing. Thus to claim EBM is in crisis because of algorithmic medicine is wrong. True EBM protects us from the harms of algorithmic medicine.

Interestingly computerized decision support systems (mentioned as a culprit in the first sentence of this section of Greenhalgh’s paper) are at the top of Haynes’ 6S hierarchy of preappraised evidence.

“In these computerized decision support systems (CDSSs), detailed individual patient data are entered into a computer program and matched to programs or algorithms in a computerized knowledge base, resulting in the generation of patient-specific assessments or recommendations for clinicians” –  Brian Haynes

At the VA we have a moderately sophisticated CDSS. It warns me if my patient with heart failure is not taking an ACE inhibitor and its smart enough that if I enter an allergy to ACE inhibitors it won’t prompt me to order one. If I tell it that a patient has limited life expectancy it will not prompt me to pursue certain routine health screenings. Thus, I don’t view CDSSs as problematic in and of themselves. The problem arises when physicians don’t consider the whole patient (remember those values and clinical circumstances) in deciding whether or not to follow prompted recommendations.

Greenhalgh has made great points about what happens when good ideas are hijacked and distorted for secondary gain but EBM is not to blame. Victor Montori (@VMontori) said it best in a Tweet to me:

“EBM principles are not in crisis, but corruption of healthcare has oft hidden behind the e-b moniker. EBM helps uncover it“.