OECD Health Policy Studies Improving Health Sector Efficiency: The Role of Information and Communication Technologies (Complete Edition - ISBN 9789264084612)

Source: SourceOECD Social Issues/Migration/Health, Volume 2010, Number 5, May 2010 , pp. i-158(158)

Publisher: OECD - Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

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Abstract:

Despite the promise they hold out, implementing information and communication technologies (ICTs) in clinical care has proven to be a very difficult undertaking. More than a decade of efforts provide a picture of significant public investments, resulting in both notable successes and some highly publicised costly delays and failures. This has been accompanied by a failure to achieve widespread understanding among the general public and the medical profession of the benefits of electronic record keeping and information exchange.

With consistent cross-country information on these issues largely absent, the OECD has used lessons learned from case studies in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United States to identify the opportunities offered by ICTs and to analyse under what conditions these technologies are most likely to result in efficiency and quality-of-care improvements. The findings highlight a number of practices or approaches that could usefully be employed in efforts to improve and accelerate the adoption and use of these technologies.

- Abbreviations

- Executive summary

- Introduction

- Generating Value from Health ICTs

- What Prevents Countries from Improving Efficiency through ICTs?

- Aligning Incentives with Health System Priorities

- Enabling a Secure Exchange of Information

- Using Benchmarking to Support Continuous Improvement

- Annex A. Country case studies

- Annex B. Project background and methodology

Document Type: Review article

Publication date: 2010-05-01