A worldwide study of the impacts of information technology on healthcare costs

Abstract

Due to skyrocketing healthcare costs, many hope for information technology to bring cost savings. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 earmarked $19 billion for healthcare IT, focusing on electronic health records. Other countries have also invested significantly in IT to reduce healthcare spending. IT’s impact on healthcare spending is thus of great interest to global healthcare policy makers. This paper examines how internet and personal computer use affect country-level healthcare spending for private and public healthcare organisations in 148 countries. We discovered significant differences in the impact of internet and personal computer use on healthcare cost savings in private vs. public healthcare settings. We examine the reasons for these differences and contrast them between developing vs. developed countries. We also find that the relationship between healthcare spending and IT is conditional on country-level institutional features, such as investor protections and corruption; and ...