Cost-effectiveness of informatics and health IT: impact on finances and quality of care

This issue of the journal focuses on an important but often underpublished area of biomedical informatics: the cost-effectiveness of informatics interventions in healthcare. The adoption of electronic health records (EHR) across the USA has been accelerated in response to legislation, but there is still much uncertainty regarding costs as well as short and long-term effects, given the many different ways in which systems are implemented and the high diversity of institutions served. A systematic review by O'Reilly ( see page 423 ) covers economic evaluations of medication management systems, and the author also describes the cost-effectiveness of a clinical decision support system (CDSS) for diabetes in another article ( see page 341 ). Frisse ( see page 328 ) reports on the financial impact of EHR in an emergency department, and Subramanian ( see page 439 ) analyzes the financial impact of a CDSS for renal dose adjustments. The financial aspects are not sufficient to assess the full impact of information systems and informatics interventions. Several articles relate to the impact of systems in the quality of care. Connelly ( see page 334 ) describes …