Information technology (IT) has the capacity to enhance the quality, safety, and efficiency of the health care sector. But the adoption of IT is considerably low in the health care sector. However the service providers plan to increase the investment in developing services that suit the health care sector. The factors that drive health care organizations to invest in IT are improved quality and efficiency.

By equipping the health care providers and their patients to easily access and use health information, IT can bring improvements in terms of the quality, safety and also the efficiency of health care.

IT improves quality and efficiency of health care

Providing quality health care requires health care providers and patients to incorporate complex information from various sources. To achieve this, doctors, nurses, clinical technicians and other healthcare professionals should be able to access and use the information about their patients easily and readily. The ability of the patients to access their own information will help them to manage themselves and to communicate with the health care system. This would enhance the quality and efficiency of health care. This makes the application of IT in health care more desirable.

Various applications of IT in health care

Application of Information Technology in health care will enable the providers to gather, store and also retrieve and disseminate information electronically. For instance, computerized provider order entry (CPOE) helps in reducing handwriting or other communication errors. With this, the doctors or other healthcare professionals can enter patient information into a computer system, which includes prescription of medicines, physician orders such as scan report, lab reports etc. Electronic Health Records refers to the set of tools which stores information about the patient or personalized reminders and prescribing alerts.

The various application of IT in healthcare includes the following:

• Electronic health record
• Computerized provider order entry
• Clinical decision support system
• Picture archiving and communications systems
• Bar coding
• Radio frequency identification
• Automated dispensing machines
• Electronic materials management
• Interoperability

The extent of application of Information Technology varies with the health care settings. Research institutes and pharmacies form the advanced user category, while clinics and nursing homes are far behind.

Health care organizations take into account both financial benefit such as return on investment and other non financial benefits while taking the decision on IT investment required. Technologies that bring in more return on investment are adopted by majority of the health care providers.