Surrogacy Success: Technology + the Human Touch

An interesting article in the New York Times talks about how technology use in the practice of medicine has certainly helped speed up the transfer of information but things might be moving too fast for some meaningful human interaction.

At West Coast Surrogacy, we partner with the best, most technologically-advanced clinics and medical professionals. Their success rates in reproductive technology are unparallelled. 
So, we are big fans of science and all the advances that have helped to make more people parents.  At the same time, we are an intimate agency and we believe in face-time and the power of one-on-one interactions. We talk, we meet, we support our surrogates and our intended parents in a very personal way.  It's the combination of the two --technology and the human touch--that makes us an agency where surrogacy works.

The proliferation of gadgets, apps and Web-based information has given clinicians — especially young ones like Dr. Rajkomar, who is 28 — a black bag of new tools: new ways to diagnose symptoms and treat patients, to obtain and share information, to think about what it means to be both a doctor and a patient.

And it has created something of a generational divide. Older doctors admire, even envy, their young colleagues’ ease with new technology. But they worry that the human connections that lie at the core of medical practice are at risk of being lost.

“Just adding an app won’t necessarily make people better doctors or more caring clinicians,”said Dr. Paul C. Tang, chief innovation and technology officer at Palo Alto Medical Foundation in Palo Alto, Calif. “What we need to learn is how to use technology to be better, more humane professionals.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/09/science/redefining-medicine-with-apps-and-ipads-the-digital-doctor.html?_r=0