WASHINGTON -- In a health-care debate characterized by partisan bickering, most lawmakers agree on one thing: American medicine needs to go digital.

When President Barack Obama designated $19.5 billion to expand the use of electronic medical records, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., said it was one of only "two good things" in February's stimulus package.

But such bipartisan enthusiasm has obscured questions about the effectiveness of health IT products, critics say. Interviews with more than two dozen doctors, academics, patients and computer programmers suggest that computer systems can increase errors, add hours to doctors' workloads and compromise care.

"Health IT can be beneficial, but many current systems are clunky, counterintuitive and in some cases dangerous," said Ross Koppel, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

Under the stimulus program, hospitals and physicians can claim millions of dollars for IT purchases, and will be penalized if they do not go digital by 2015. Obama has said the changes will save billions in health-care costs and will minimize medication errors.

But health IT's effectiveness is unclear. Researchers at the University of Minnesota found in March that electronic records prevented only two infections a year.

A 2005 report in the journal Pediatrics found that deaths at the children's hospital at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center more than doubled in the five months after a computerized order-entry system went online. The center said the study had not found that technology caused the rise in mortality and maintained that medication errors were down 60 percent since computers were introduced in 2002.

However, the Senate Finance Committee has amassed testimony alleging serious computer flaws from doctors, patients and engineers unhappy with current systems.