The Impact of Health Information and Communication Technology on Clinical Quality, Productivity, and Workers

Ari Bronsoler, John van Reenen and Joseph Doyle
Additional contact information
Ari Bronsoler: Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Joseph Doyle: Initiative on the Digital Economy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Annual Review of Economics, 2022, vol. 14, issue 1, 23-46

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: health care; technology; productivity; jobs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 I18 J21 J24 M15 O14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-economics-080921-101909
Full text downloads are only available to subscribers. Visit the abstract page for more information.

Related works:
Working Paper: 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:anr:reveco:v:14:y:2022:p:23-46

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.annualreviews.org/action/ecommerce

DOI: 10.1146/annurev-economics-080921-101909

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Annual Review of Economics from Annual Reviews Annual Reviews 4139 El Camino Way Palo Alto, CA 94306, USA.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by http://www.annualreviews.org ().