Moving towards efficient, safe, and meaningful healthcare: issues for automation

Correcting problems in healthcare delivery has become a top priority in the USA due to skyrocketing insurance costs and fast growth in national healthcare spending. This paper is aimed at examining how Health Information Technology (HIT) could be used to help the USA move towards efficient, safe, and meaningful healthcare. Our study is focused on healthcare needs in three areas: documentation, standardisation, and design and implementation. Urgent research issues in each area are presented. Our findings maintain that unique needs in the diverse healthcare environments must be incorporated into the convergent HIT system.