Adoption of Health IT

Going by the projections being made by various surveys in this field, the global market for healthcare IT will expand at a compound annual growth rate of 7.0 percent by 2017. The market which was at a net value of $40 billion in 2012 is expected to expand to 56.7 billion by 2017. This is going to be triggered by the need for effective administrative solutions and an increasing demand for clinical data technology. Empirical data seems to suggest that physicians, hospitals, and other providers develop the ability to better reduce errors and better coordinate care with the help of Healthcare systems. It also reduces the overall cost of operations and makes patients more healthy and satisfied. There are some major drivers of the growth in the adoption of Healthcare IT - starting from a growing demand for interoperable systems to the rise in aging population.

There are also financial incentives from the U.S. government providing for adoption of technology in Healthcare. The systems also seem to provide a high rate of return on investment to its users. From the time the Obama administration has started encouraging providers to adopt electronic health records; usage seems to have increased dramatically. This has been proved by the fact that EHR usage by physicians, which stood at about 17 percent in the year 2008 has risen to 50 percent by 2012 which has enabled them to receive the meaningful use incentive payment.  The adoption of HER by hospitals which stood at a dismal rate of just 9 percent in 2008 is currently more than 80 percent. Health IT has helped them provide better coordinate care, which has in turn improved their patients’ health and helped them save money at the same time.

As much as the momentum for Health IT is gaining ground there are also a lot of detractors. They do not necessarily agree that these advances will further doctors' knowledge about patients and help them care for people in a better, more efficient way. ON the contrary they feel that it will drain their time and financial resources. As examples they quote that EHRs actually take more time entering patient information than it takes to see patients. They also feel that the compulsion to adopt ICD-10 by October 1, 2014 is also not going to be of much help as it greatly increases the specificity of diagnostic codes physicians must use when billing payers, which is a way is going to create a major  headache for some to learn the new codes.  Various Researchers have also indicated that  high initial costs to implement these healthcare IT applications systems is acting as a deterrent to the adoption . Further to this the maintenance expenses are also quite high which ultimately ends up slowing the pace of further growth. Also, it has been noticed that inspite of most physicians expressing their  interest in the prospect of using mobile health tools for clinical purposes, the mHealth market within the provider setting remains untapped. Research shows nearly 60 percent of physicians as non-users of mobile health tools.  

In many surveys done by leading companies to gauge the acceptance of healthcare IT amongst Physicians have elicited information which indicate that quite a reasonable percentage, although they are going ahead with the process of adoption, think that use of health IT tools ultimately will cost more and not less. They also felt that the promise of reduced costs due to increased use is probably inflated.  There seems ot be a belief amongst some of the respondents that hospital-physician relationships will become less stable as hospitals continue to comply with Meaningful Use.

Inspite of a lack of complete support for the process the government seems quite convinced about the supposed benefits of adopting healthcare IT and is leaving no stone unturned to hasten its implementation. Infact, there seems to be a belief that the adoptions is likely to be accelerated  likely if the local insurers, employers and consumers ensure that they tie their provider to those using HIT effectively in clinical care coordination and administrative paperwork reduction. Healthcare software development teams can help you build clinical and EHR/EMR software projects within allocated budgets and time schedules.

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