To the Editor:

It is hard for me to overlook the major conflict of interest in Dr. Robert Rowley’s article boasting about his clinic’s wonderful experience with their electronic health record [“Practicing Without Paper Charts,” February 2005, page 37].

If the view was from anyone else except the founder and chairman of the software company, then the article might have some credibility. The way it stands, it sounds too much like a free advertisement for his electronic records system.

Editor’s response:

FPM asks every author to complete a form disclosing conflicts of interest. We alert readers to conflicts that we consider to be material and reject articles where we deem the conflict to be too great.

Because Dr. Rowley’s article focuses more on the workflow changes that accompanied the introduction of an electronic health record system than on the merits of any given system, we did not consider the conflict of interest he had sufficient to justify rejection of the article.