Healthcare information technology (HIT) has been defined as “the application of information processing involving both computer hardware and software that deals with the storage, retrieval, sharing, and use of health care information, data, and knowledge for communication and decision making.
Globally, healthcare enterprises including providers and payers are constantly striving to achieve three major objectives: Improve patient care experience, optimize health outcomes and reduce healthcare costs through healthcare consulting.
With managing health outcomes as central theme, healthcare organizations are striving to drive synergies in cost reduction, operational efficiency and delivery of care. However, for healthcare organizations to realize the triple aim, it is important to address inherent challenges of modernizing technology systems that have grown in an unstructured manner over a period of time. Health information technology includes various technologies that span from simple charting to more advanced decision support and integration with medical technology.
Health information technology presents numerous opportunities for improving and transforming healthcare which includes reducing human errors, improving clinical outcomes, facilitating care coordination, improving practice efficiencies, and tracking data over time and adoption of health information technology with varying degrees of evidence about the impact of health information technology on patient safety.