Nationwide e-health records by 2014?

• Position: E-HEALTH - Electronic health records

President Barack Obama has plans to standardize and computerize all health records within five years as part of his effort to boost the U.S. economy.

But experts say the hurdles are great. For example, only 8% of the nation's 5,000 hospitals and 17% of its 800,000 physicians currently use the kind of computerized recordkeeping systems that Obama envisions, according to CNNMoney.com. Workers with the skills necessary to build and implement such technology are scarce, and the cost would be great. And, finally, patient privacy must be guaranteed.

Independent studies from Harvard, RAND, and the Commonwealth Fund have shown that such a plan could cost $75 billion to $100 billion over the 10 years they think it would take to implement it.

Highly skilled health information technology professionals are rare. The greatest cost will be paying and training the labor force needed to create the network, which must be user-friendly, experts agree.

"Doctors cannot spend hours and hours learning a new system," Luis Castillo, senior vice president of Siemens Healthcare, told CNNMoney.com. "It needs to be a ubiquitous, 'anytime, anywhere' solution that has easily accessible data in a simple-to-use web-based application."

Furthermore, ensuring the privacy of patients' records in a nationalized computer network will require new laws. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act does not address web records. Hackers and system failures must be anticipated, too.

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Despite the enormous challenges, a fully computerized health...