How IT Is Changing Health Care

The top nine ways in which health IT is transforming health care, according to the management consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, are:

• Reducing medical errors by identifying potential mistakes.
• Improving collaboration throughout the health-care system by providing more complete knowledge to everyone involved in a patient's care.
• Ensuring better transitions in care as patients move from hospitals to outpatient facilities.
• Speeding up and improving emergency care by linking first-responders with emergency departments and giving hospitals immediate access to a patient's medical records.
• Empowering patients and their families to participate in care decisions by giving them more access to their medical records and to information about care options.
• Adding convenience through, for example, online appointment scheduling, online displays of emergency room wait times and email communications with physicians.
• Improving care for military members by making their medical records immediately available to everyone from front-line medics to stateside rehab centers.
• Enhancing responses to public-health emergencies and disasters.
• Facilitating medical research and innovation by aggregating vast amounts of data and improving analysis of treatments.

"In reality," she says, "health IT is much more transformative. It's a strong collection of technologies, tools and innovations that are already revolutionizing the way people receive and manager their care in communities across the nation."