Local IT health expenditure is expected to reach $2.1 billion by 2016, according to a report by analyst firm Ovum, which is driven by increased spending on electronic health records (EHRs), picture archiving and telehealth services.
Over the next two years, 58 per cent of small physician practices plan to roll out electronic health records. And by 2014, the US Federal Government wants more than half of all healthcare facilities to use EHRs.
The nation's peak e-health group has released a comprehensive set of documents that outline how the Federal Government's $466.7 million electronic health record/health identifier project will be implemented over the coming years, and how it will work in practice.
Health industry CIOs have a real opportunity to drive innovation and break down siloes of information in light of the federal government's allocation of $467 million to electronic health records over the next two years.
Hospitals and physicians have four years to deploy comprehensive electronic health records (EHR) systems and the technology needed to support them if they hope to snag some of the billions of dollars the federal government has earmarked to reimburse them for the work. That's why they're already scrambling to figure out how to set up what are likely to be costly and complex systems.