Digital Waste? Unintended Consequences of Health Information Technology

Petri Böckerman (), Mika Kortelainen, Liisa Laine, Mikko Nurminen and Tanja Saxell ()
Additional contact information
Tanja Saxell: VATT, Helsinki

No 12275, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We exploit a large-scale natural experiment – the rollout of a nationwide electronic prescribing system in Finland – to study how digitization of prescriptions affects pharmaceutical use and health outcomes. We use comprehensive administrative data from patients treated with benzodiazepines, which are globally popular, effective but addictive psychotropic medications. We find no impact on benzodiazepine use on average, but among younger patients e-prescribing increases repeat prescription use. Younger patients' health outcomes do not improve but adverse outcomes, such as prescription drug abuse disorders and suicide attempts, increase dramatically. Improving access to medication through easier ordering may thus increase medication overuse.

Keywords: health information technology; electronic prescribing; repeat prescriptions; inefficiency; medication overuse (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H51 H75 I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 73 pages
Date: 2019-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-pay
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published - published online as 'Information Technology, Improved Access, and Use of Prescription Drugs' in: Journal of the European Economic Association , 30 April 2024

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp12275.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Digital Waste? Unintended Consequences of Health Information Technology (2019)
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:iza:izadps:dp12275

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().