Special Issue: Health Information Technology — Guest Editors: Sachin H. Jain, MD, MBA; and David B

December 23, 2010

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

December 23, 2010

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

December 23, 2010

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

December 23, 2010

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

December 23, 2010

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

December 23, 2010

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

December 23, 2010

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.

December 22, 2010

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.

December 22, 2010

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

December 22, 2010

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

December 22, 2010

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

December 22, 2010

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

December 22, 2010

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.

December 22, 2010

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.

December 22, 2010

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

December 21, 2010

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

December 20, 2010

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

December 20, 2010

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

December 20, 2010

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

December 17, 2010

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.

December 17, 2010

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

December 17, 2010

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

December 17, 2010

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