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Health Information Technology

Health information technology (Health IT) allows comprehensive management of medical information and its secure exchange between health care consumers and providers. Broad use of health IT will:
  • Improve health care quality;
  • Prevent medical errors;
  • Reduce health care costs;
  • Increase administrative efficiencies;
  • Decrease paperwork; and
  • Expand access to affordable care.

Interoperable health IT will improve individual patient care, but it will also bring many public health benefits including:

  • Early detection of infectious disease outbreaks around the country;
  • Improved tracking of chronic disease management; and
  • Evaluation of health care based on value enabled by the collection of de-identified price and quality information that can be compared.

Making Health Information Technology Personal

Health information technologies can be tools that help individuals maintain their health through better management of their health information. Health IT will help consumers gather all of their health information in one place so they can thoroughly understand it and share it securely with their health care providers so they get the care that best fits their individual needs.

Health IT can help to improve public health one individual at a time by building partnerships between health care consumers and providers across the country.

Medical Identity Theft Town Hall Plans Underway;
Please RSVP

To learn more, visit ONC Commissioned Medical Identity Theft Assessment.

The ONC-Coordinated
Federal Health IT Strategic Plan:
2008-2012

Now Available

Upcoming Events

HL7 22nd Plenary and Working Group Meeting
Vancouver, B.C.
September 14 - 19, 2008
More >>

AHIC September Meeting
Washington, DC
September 23, 2008
More >>

All Upcoming Events items

Personal Experiences

"We have hospitals in Afghanistan and Iraq, and many of the soldiers would arrive without records in Germany, with no record of the CAT scans or what happened in surgery in Afghanistan or Iraq. The clinicians in Germany would have to re-operate on the patient, would have to redo all their x-ray evaluations, CAT scans, etc...." ~ Colonel John Holcomb

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