Special Issue: Health Information Technology – Guest Editors: Sachin H. Jain, MD, MBA; and David Blumenthal, MD, MPP

Electronic health records best support process improvements when win-win situations are created to achieve both organizational benefits and team member work flow improvements.

Clinical data should contribute to practice-based learning and improvement, resulting in improved patient care as well as meeting increasingly rigorous physician accountability requirements.

A review of exemplary VHA-sponsored telemedicine interventions indicates that telemedicine can efficiently address patient healthcare needs.

Initial experience with the Diabetes Prevention and Control Alliance indicates that large-scale prevention and disease control management programs make economic sense.

Creating a healthcare consumer is more likely than ever before thanks to innovations in information technology, but the benefits are not yet fully realized.

Smart Health Communities create new value by leveraging investments in health information exchange to provide an array of services for both consumer and community.

A trial of electronic note–based decision support showed small effects on management of patients with heart disease and diabetes, mostly because it was infrequently used.

A national study of electronic health record (EHR) adoption and hospital quality finds that existing measures may be inappropriate for assessing the effect of EHR adoption on quality.

Mechanisms to better codify clinical outcomes and intermediate outcome milestones are necessary to make the fullest use of EHR data for comparative effectiveness research.

Despite increasing availability of healthcare information technology, a literature review showed few clinical data on medication adherence interventions using this technology.

This study analyzes various pathways toward hospital adoption of electronic health records and explores relationships among various electronic health record function variables.

Transactional data from the Surescripts electronic prescribing network may be used to track electronic health record adoption efficiently and with regional granularity.

One medical student’s search for answers about her sister’s cancer leads her to realize that health information exchange can support the development of more sophisticated approaches to identifying root causes of disease.

An electronic health record–based feedback program, the Acute Respiratory Infection Quality Dashboard, did not lead to an overall change in antibiotic prescribing in primary care.

With the transition to "meaningful use" of electronic health records, medical educators should consider ways to meaningfully improve how physicians are trained for practice.

There are opportunities for and obstacles to adding core biomedical informatics competencies to medical school curricula.

Health information technology and a robust data infrastructure are essential for advances for comparative effectiveness research.

Using their own technology, health plans can provide valuable data and capabilities to move adoption of health information technology systems forward.

The HITECH Act will modernize the nation's healthcare system by advancing adoption and use of health information technology.

The authors discuss the wide-reaching impact of recent legislation spurring the adoption of health information technology and provide an overview of the content found in this special issue.

A sophisticated nationwide health information technology infrastructure, driven by HITECH's meaningful use requirements, is required to support changing healthcare reimbursement models.

The experience of Partners HealthCare offers some unique insights into the process of electronic medical record adoption across a large, diverse health system.

Large-scale transformation of the US healthcare system will require multiple interventions and tools implemented together.