Economic Perspectives
on Health Information
Technology
Aggressive Adoption Will Reduce Costs And Improve Quality In Health Care.
David J. Brailer
David J. Brailer is the first
National Health Information
Technology Coordinator, U.S.
Department of Health and Human
Services. His duties as National
Coordinator are to execute actions
to foster widespread deployment of
health information technology
within ten years to help realize
substantial improvements in safety
and efficiency. Previously, he was at the Health
Technology Center in San Francisco, CA, and Chairman
and CEO of CareScience, Inc. He has doctoral degrees in
both medicine (West Virginia University) and managerial
economics (University of Pennsylvania). Until recently,
he was active in patient care delivery with an emphasis
on immune deficiency.
It seems paradoxical that health care spending and
examples of inferior health care have been rising rapidly
at the same time. An important factor is the slow
pace at which the health care system has adopted information
technology (IT). This paper discusses the dimensions
of the problems that could be mitigated by effective
use of IT in the health care system, their consequences,
and their potential solutions. It also discusses
the economic and institutional barriers to deploying IT and how the inherent economies of scale in IT are likely
to lead to new problems of competition within the health
care system. Inasmuch as this paper was based on an
address followed by a question-and-answer period, it
also includes an edited version of the recorded questions
and answers.
David J. Brailer