New York Times Reports on Use of Computers to Aid End-of-Life Care Decisions

Internet companies, health care providers, hospitals and communities are using computers to help patients and families make decisions about end-of-life care, the New York Times reports. For example, a computer program called LifePath "guides users as they rank the things that are most important to them in thinking about their deaths or the deaths of family members." A CD-ROM and an accompanying Web site called Completing a Life, created by a university and a hospital in Michigan, offer a "similar resource," the Times reports. Computers are also being used "to ensure instant access to documents like living wills and medical directives" to help people decide what treatments to choose at the end of their lives. Dr. Ira Byock, director of Promoting Excellence in End-of-Life Care, said that computers are "a highly personalized and inherently relevant way for people to learn about end-of-life decisions because computers and CD-ROMs allow them to go where they are interested and they can be used in the privacy of the home." But Dr. Joanne Lynn, a geriatrician and director of the Center to Improve Care of the Dying, said that computers may not solve all problems because choices when someone is dying "can be hard to distill into clear alternatives that fit well into a computer program." However, Lynn and others say that "anything that encourages Americans to talk more openly about death and end-of-life care" can be beneficial (Cutter, New York Times, 9/4).