Information Technology, Improved Access, and Use of Prescription Drugs

Petri Böckerman, Mika Kortelainen, Liisa T Laine, Mikko Nurminen and Tanja Saxell

Journal of the European Economic Association, 2025, vol. 23, issue 1, 396-430

Abstract: We estimate the effects of health information technology designed to improve access to medication while limiting overuse through easier prescription renewal and improved information provision. We focus on benzodiazepines, a commonly prescribed class of mental health and insomnia medications, which are highly effective but potentially addictive. We study the staggered rollout of a nationwide electronic prescribing system over four years in Finland and use population-wide, individual-level administrative data sets. We find that e-prescribing increases average benzodiazepine use due to increased prescription renewals. The increase is most pronounced for younger patients. E-prescribing can improve the health of elderly patients and may help to balance the access-overuse trade-off. Without additional monitoring for addiction in place, it may, however, also have unintended health consequences for younger patients, who are more likely to develop mental and behavioral health disorders.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jeea/jvae034 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:oup:jeurec:v:23:y:2025:i:1:p:396-430.

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the European Economic Association is currently edited by Romain Wacziarg

More articles in Journal of the European Economic Association from European Economic Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().