In all fairness, the electronic health record is still being perfected in it's current form. However, we will someday transcend to the next level of infromation gathering where clinicians won't need to perform the step of typing information and orders into the system anymore. Instead, this information will be recorded in real-time and documented into the appropriate section of the chart through electronic dictation (without a transcriptionist). In fact, this type of technology is already being experiemented with, in a few hospitals. It, too, is in the basic stages of testing. Once that step is perfected, clinicians will have no choice but to start interacting more directly with people again.

The concept isn't limited to healthcare technology, by any means -it's just what I used as an example. Bottomline, I am a firm believer that technology will truly be "optimized" when it returns us to the "human interface".