Role of IT in the management of Hospitals

Abstract or Introduction

The health industry is growing at a feverish pace. It is estimated that up to 30% of the total health budget may be spent one way or another on handling information, collecting it, looking for it, and storing it. In the coming decades, the healthcare system will be undergoing the biggest transformation of any industry in the history. Health being information-intensive, safe and reliable healthcare will depend more and more on access to, and the use of, information that is accurate, valid, reliable, timely, relevant, legible, complete and retrievable.

From the care delivery point of view, there will be significant increase in the demand for high quality care. The aging population with more complicated medical problems coupled with the increasing medical knowledge, will demand greater services and effort from limited medical resources. Furthermore, the increasing utilization of multidisciplinary care creates the need for interoperability between various healthcare entities. The need for rapid automation of the medical care with new technologies addressing the medical data management is therefore obvious.

Although our current health system in general is inconsistently and significantly underutilizing the Web and IT, it is asserted that technology is one of the most pervasive and ubiquitous tools in healthcare today, transforming not only healthcare but also the professions within it by alleviating in certain ways, both financial and management burdens. Information technology (IT) is therefore perceived to possess the potential to improve the quality, safety, and efficiency of health care. Lines below, try to describe how this comes to happen.