Health Information Technology and Telemedicine in the 21 Century – a Survey

Information technology has penetrated almost every industry, improving resource utilization, lowering operational costs and increasing overall customer satisfaction, however the healthcare industry has not embraced information technology as willingly. As a result, despite having built a global reputation for providing the most innovative care to treat patients, the cost of healthcare has been steadily rising in the United States while the quality of care provided has been declining. This paper discusses the key problems with the United States healthcare system and how information technology adoption can manage these problems. An additional benefit to wide spread adoption of information technology within healthcare is the digital sharing of electronic patient records, used to gather patient health information into a coherent record, regardless of where the patient-physician encounter originated.