You’re not going to see anyone reading it at Scarborough Beach, but Digital Medicine: Health Care in the Internet Era hits upon a hot topic during this long hot summer of the proposed health-care overhaul.

The authors of the new book are Darrell M. West, a former Brown University professor who is now at the Brookings Institution, and by Edward Alan Miller, a former Brown University professor who is now at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

The book came out in April, just after President Obama added $19 billion to the stimulus package for health-information technology, and Congress is now on recess amid heated debate over how to rework the country’s health-care system.

West said he began working on the book three years ago while he was still in Providence. “I’d done work on technology, so I was looking for a policy area where technology would be important, and health care was an area that jumped out,” he said. “Everyone from Hillary Clinton to Newt Gingrich was touting technology as a way to save health care.”

America is not exactly leading the way when it comes to health-care information technology. Maybe all you need to know is that 80 percent of doctors in New Zealand rely on electronic records, compared with just 17 percent of doctors in the United States. (First they film The Lord of the Rings in New Zealand, and now this.)

Yet greater use of electronic records would have some obvious benefits. For one thing, you wouldn’t have to fill out long, tedious forms every time you see a new doctor, and you could avoid duplicate tests, West said.

Digital medicine would help reduce errors at a time when 98,000 Americans die each year because of medical errors, West said. Consider electronic prescriptions, for example. “Have you ever tried to read a doctor’s handwriting?” he asked. “Some medical errors come out of bad handwriting.”

Also, digital medicine would help to cut costs at a time when the United States spends $2 trillion a year on health care, representing 16 percent of the gross domestic product, the book says. “Medical experts estimate that effective implementation of electronic medical records could save $81 billion a year by improving health-care efficiency and safety. Financial savings could grow to twice that amount by facilitating the prevention and management of chronic disease through health information technology.”

West said about half of the $1 trillion needed over 10 years to pay for the proposed health-care overhaul would come from administrative savings, “and a lot of that is technology driven.”

Of course, obstacles remain. People are concerned about the privacy. But West said, “I think people’s records are safer through electronic records than through paper records.”

And the health-care legislation is facing obstacles as it becomes the center of a high-stakes political battle. West said, “It ruins Obama’s presidency if it doesn’t pass because this is his top domestic priority, and if you can’t pass your most important legislation when Democrats have big majorities in the House and Senate, that’s not very good.”

West said “Blue Dog” Democrats stand to lose the most if the initiative fails and emboldens Republicans. He said that when former President Bill Clinton’s health-care bill went down in 1994, “conservatives were energized and liberals were disillusioned,” leading to a GOP “tidal wave” in the midterm elections.

But West expects some form of overhaul to pass by year’s end. “I’m predicting this is going to be the next October surprise,” he said, “even if it takes place in November or December.”

efitzpat@projo.com