Health Information Technology

Health information technology (HIT) is a term that is often used interchangeably with electronic medical records to mean a system in which medical professionals store the information usually contained in a patient chart on a computer. More broadly, HIT includes the resources, methods, and tools that enable comprehensive management of medical information—i.e., its acquisition, storage, retrieval, exchange, and use by health care consumers and providers. RAND Health analysts have addressed many dimensions of emerging HIT policy issues, estimating the potential costs and benefits of widespread adoption of HIT, developing guidelines for the capabilities of electronic prescribing systems, assessing current systems in terms of these guidelines, examining patterns of HIT adoption, and exploring privacy issues related to electronic health records.