ABSTRACT
Technology is one of medicine’s most fascinating dimensions. In a relatively short time, medicine has developed from providing a basic understanding of infection and its causes to the ability to successfully perform multiple organ transplants, reattach limbs after they have been severed, and prolong life with procedures and drugs that were unheard of only decades ago. From a data and information perspective, the increased volume and complexity of the information that is generated at the bedside and the need to pass that information from provider to provider, to improve the safety of patient care, to respond to the many and varied payer programs that dominate the U.S. financing of healthcare, and to improve efficiency and effectiveness in order to drive down an out-of-control rate of increase in healthcare costs, have made implementation of healthcare information technology (IT) mandatory. Yet, both of these areas, advances in medical technology and deployment of IT, consume huge investments and require time and process change. In this chapter, both kinds of technologies will be briefly introduced. Both are vast fields and will require further study by the person whose professional life in healthcare management brings him or her into day-to-day involvement with either IT or advances in medical technology.
