The impact of health information and communication technology on clinical quality, productivity, and workers

Ari Bronsoler, Joseph Doyle and John van Reenen

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: The adoption of health information and communication technology (HICT) has surged over the past two decades. We survey the medical and economic literature on HICT adoption and its impact on clinical outcomes, productivity, and the health care workforce. We find that HICT improves clinical outcomes and lowers health care costs; however, (a) the effects are modest so far, (b) it takes time for these effects to materialize, and (c) there is much variation in the impact. More evidence on the causal effects of HICT on productivity is needed to improve our analytical understanding and to guide further adoption. There is little econometric work directly investigating the impact of HICT on labor market outcomes, but the existing literature suggests that there are no substantial negative effects on employment and earnings. Overall, although health care is in many ways exceptional, we are struck by the similarities of our conclusions to the wider findingson the relationship between productivity and information and communication technologies, which stress the importance of complementary factors (e.g., management practices and skills) in determining the impact of these new technologies.

Keywords: healthcare; technology; productivity; jobs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Annual Review of Economics, 2022, 14, pp. 23-46. ISSN: 1941-1383

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/116934/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Impact of Health Information and Communication Technology on Clinical Quality, Productivity, and Workers (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:116934

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().