Information technology plays a crucial role in enabling healthcare delivery. Bindra (2018) defines information technology (IT) as systems of computers organized to store, retrieve, transit, and analyze information. IT applied to the fields of health and healthcare is often referred to as health information technology (HIT). HIT supports the management of health information across a variety of computerized systems and enables the secure exchange of information between such stakeholders as consumers, payers, providers, and regulators (Bindra, 2018).

Effective HIT implementation requires significant resources, which can be roughly divided into three categories: hardware, software, and content. The hardware category refers to actual machines and their components. Software is the source code used to power the machines. Content is the information needed for the care of patients. Software, hardware, and content can be considered the minimum requirements for any effective HIT system (Bindra, 2018). The use of hardware, software, and content yields clinical integration. According to Bindra (2018), clinical integration seeks to ensure that care is coordinated across a wide spectrum of clinical conditions, settings, providers, and time, preventing patients from falling through the cracks. This has been achieved with the use of electronic medical records (EMR).

Full implementation and use of EMRs have resulted in several important improvements, including the quality and convenience of patient care, patient participation in care, accuracy of diagnoses and health outcomes, care coordination, and practice efficiencies and cost savings (Fillit et al., 2017). On the consumer side, examples of promising patient-facing technology include personal health records, patient portals, mobile health technologies, personal monitoring systems, secure e-mail messaging, Internet-based health information, education and consultation, and social media networking websites. Some tools give patients the opportunity to be more responsible for their care by providing them with the ability to access health information, choose healthcare providers, and manage their health care. Other tools allow patients to communicate directly with their care team, coordinate care across caregivers, and interact with other patients with similar health conditions, creating a broader and more connected healthcare network (Greaves & Rozenblum, 2018).

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