Healthcare Technology Innovation Adoption

This book aims to study the factors effecting the adoption and diffusion of Health Information Technology (HIT) innovation. It analyses the adoption processes of various tools and applications, particularly Electronic Health Records (EHR), highlighting the impact on various sectors of the healthcare system, such as physicians, administration and patient care, while also identifying the various pitfalls and gaps in the literature. With the various challenges currently facing the United States healthcare system, the study, adoption and diffusion of healthcare technology innovation, particularly HIT, is imperative to achieving national goals. This book is organized into three sections. Section one reviews theories and applications for the diffusion of Health Care Technologies. Section two evaluates EHR technology, including the barriers and enables in adoption and alternative technologies. Finally, section three examines the factors impacting the adoption of EHR systems. This book will be a key source for students, academics, researchers, practitioners, professionals and policy-makers.

Healthcare Information Technology Innovation and Sustainability: Frontiers and Adoption presents research in the emerging field on information systems and informatics in the healthcare industry. By addressing innovative concepts and critical issues through case studies and experimental research, this reference source is useful for practitioners, researchers and academics aiming to advance the knowledge and practice of these interdisciplinary fields of healthcare information.

The U.S. health care system is in a state of flux, and changes currently under way seem capable of exerting sizable effects on medical innovation. This volume explores how the rapid transition to managed care might affect the rate and direction of medical innovation. The experience with technological change in medicine in other nations whose health care systems have "single-payer" characteristics is thoroughly examined. Technology and Health Care in an Era of Limits examines how financing and care delivery strategies affect the decisions made by hospital administrators and physicians to adopt medical technologies. It also considers the patient's stake in the changing health care economy and the need for a stronger independent contribution of patients to the choice of technology used in their care. Finally, the volume explores the impact of changes in the demand for medical technology in pharmaceutical, medical device, and surgical procedure innovation.

What information and decision-making processes determine how and whether an experimental medical technology becomes accepted and used? Adopting New Medical Technology reviews the strengths and weaknesses of present coverage and adoption practices, highlights opportunities for improving both the decision-making processes and the underlying information base, and considers approaches to instituting a much-needed increase in financial support for evaluative research. Essays explore the nature of technological change; the use of technology assessment in decisions by health care providers and federal, for-profit, and not-for-profit payers; the role of the courts in determining benefits coverage; strengthening the connections between evaluative research and coverage decision-making; manufacturers' responses to the increased demand for outcomes research; and the implications of health care reform for technology policy.

The twentieth century brought tremendous advances in health care technology, from antibiotics to laparoscopic surgery to targeted therapies for cancer--but these gains have been expensive. Governments are struggling to control burgeoning expenditures without compromising the quality of health care. Increasingly, these efforts have relied on "cost-effectiveness analysis" that balances costs against patient benefits to determine which treatments will qualify for reimbursement. Is the use of cost-effectiveness analysis to guide technology adoption wise? Although reimbursement criteria may satisfy government health budgets today, they threaten to stifle the innovation that will generate new breakthroughs in health care technologies tomorrow. Such criteria benefit current patients by lowering the cost of health care in the short term, but they also hurt future patients by limiting producers' incentives for further medical innovation. Developers of drugs to treat HIV/AIDS, for example, earn lifetime profits equal to only 5 percent of the estimated $1.4 trillion social value of their treatments. How can policymakers reward innovators adequately--and thereby secure the welfare of future patients--while ensuring that current patients have access to much-needed new treatments? In this book, Anupam B. Jena and Tomas J. Philipson argue that further use of cost-effectiveness analysis to curb health care spending may do more harm than good. Governments should adopt a more inclusive view of cost-effectiveness, one that reflects not only the short-term costs to patients but also the long-term effect on medical innovation. Policymakers should provide sufficient incentives for companies to develop new health care technologies--or risk a dangerous shortage of life-saving drugs in the future.

Innovations in information technology (IT) have improved efficiency and quality in many industries. Healthcare has not been one of them. Although some administrative IT systems, such as those for billing, scheduling, and inventory management, are already in place in the healthcare industry, little adoption of clinical IT, such as Electronic Medical Record Systems (EMR-S) and Clinical Decision Support tools, has occurred. Government intervention has been called for to speed the adoption process for Health Information Technology (HIT), based on the widespread belief that its adoption, or diffusion, is too slow to be socially optimal. In this report, we estimate the current level and pattern of HIT adoption in the different types of healthcare organizations, and we evaluate factors that affect this diffusion process. First, we make an effort to derive a population-wide adoption level of administrative and clinical HIT applications according to information in the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS)-Dorenfest database (formerly the Dorenfest IHDS+TM Database, second release, 2004) and compare our estimates to alternative ones. We then attempt to summarize the current state and dynamics of HIT adoption according to these data and briefly review existing empirical studies on the HIT-adoption process. By comparing adoption rates across different types of healthcare providers and geographical areas, we help focus the policy agenda by identifying which healthcare providers lag behind and may need the most incentives to adopt HIT. Next, we employ regression analysis to separate the effects of the provider's characteristics and factors on adoption of Electronic Medical Records (EMR), Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE), and Picture Archiving Communications Systems (PACS), and compare the effects to findings in the literature.

Across the world, the demands placed on health systems are growing rapidly. Developed countries face the challenge of providing services to an ageing population with changing health needs, while countries with developing health systems must find ways of ensuring their populations are provided with access to healthcare. Innovative thinking is essential to meet these twin challenges, but innovation is both a cause and cure of many struggles in healthcare — we need it, but it is hard to manage and the introduction of new technology can lead to higher costs. Using real-life examples and case studies from around the world, this book introduces the latest thinking on understanding and managing healthcare innovation more effectively. It does this from the perspective of governments responsible for shaping health policy, healthcare organisations providing services and juggling competing demands, and from the perspective of the industries that supply the new drugs, devices and other technologies. Managing Innovation in Healthcare is the perfect accompaniment for MSc, PhD and MBA students on health policy, management and public health courses, as well as managers, consultants and policy makers involved in healthcare services in both the public and private sector.