Meeting National and International Goals for Improving Health Care: The Role of Information Technology

Abstract-Modernizing our health care system will lead to im-provements in medical research. Health informatics will allow medical researchers to determine the effectiveness of a particular treatment for a given population or to discover the harmful side-effects of a drug. While some of this research will occur in the private sector, public investment in this area will also be impor-tant. This report finds that both the United States and the United Kingdom commit roughly the same percentage of total public medical research funds to health informatics. However, the United Kingdom has a much richer data set of patient data avail-able for research. To benefit from the full potential of health informatics, the United States should develop the capability to share medical data for authorized research in a timely and effi-cient manner. I