Healthcare Information Technology Research & Analysis : Coplan & Company : IT Procurement Management, Project Management, System Acquisition

According to a Brookings Institution forum, HIT will not provide quality and cost benefits unless we change the healthcare environment.  The Forum underscored the fact that HIT is just a tool.

We need to stop all the misleading media promotions, advertisements, political rhetoric and tendencies about HIT as the ultimate solution that will eliminate healthcare costs and improve patient safety.  Unfortunately, HIT’s potential is often greatly exaggerated.  This distracts us and focuses our attention on an overly ambitious attempt to replace a paper record or medical decision making with the "magic" of HIT.  This does not work.  What HIT does is enable professionals and organizations to accumulate data-elements into meaningful information and to coordinate complex interactions. For example, HIT helps collect and enter data into graphs and reminders.  These improvements link doctors, nurses and patients across different organizations and time.  

We need to put HIT back in perspective and focus on its strengths as a tool that can practically support health care professionals.  There is a fundamental conflict between the "messy" nature of healthcare work and the formal, standardized and comparatively rigid nature of HIT.  We must balance and adjust our perspective on HIT and how it can help healthcare professionals work.