Healthcare IT, what is IT

It always confuses me when they talk about healthcare IT. Sometimes IT means IT as we know it, the networking, serving, connecting kind that keeps hospitals running, drugs dripping, dispensing and swallowing and of course, injecting, and the Docs poor penmanship from killing too many people accidentally. Sometimes healthcare IT means the finanacial aspects of running a medical center, practice or organization, dealing with reimbursement, HIPPA Compliance and all payer/payee interactions. Sometimes medical or healthcare IT is all about patient information, web portals, patient/care giver communication or DTC, direct-to-consumer advertsing. More and more healthcare IT is focused on training physicians with advanced eLearning platforms and CMEs for continuing medical education.

IT as used in conjunction with healthcare and medicine and pharmaceuticals and medical devices and training and organizing and teaching and sharing and healing is a vast complex system of technology that backs every function in the immense world that is medicine in the United States. IT is the backbone of what is 17% of the U.S. economy and IT is often what extends and improves the quality of life for many Americans.

So next time someone asks about DDA Medical’s long list of Healthcare IT Services, the first question back will be, which IT is IT that they are talking about.