Health Informatics in China - HIT Adoption

HIT Adoption

Health information technology is now entering its second software generation in China, and IT usage in hospitals resembles that of the late 1970s in the United States. Most hospitals in China incorporate IT software into their payment and billing systems, and many have also begun integrating IT into clinical systems in the past five years.

The use of IT in clinical systems has emerged on a departmental basis. As a result of inexperience with IT infrastructure, however, hospitals have encountered several obstacles. Fragmentation, duplicative systems, and poor integration between diverse software systems have created "information islands" that impede data sharing.

Three valuable lessons are evident from China's HIT development over the past ten years:

• Medical information should be integrated across all departments in the hospital. Poor integration of diverse software systems within hospitals impedes inter-hospital information exchanges and creates problems as IT use expands.
• In order for IT systems to benefit clinical services and hospital management, effective overall IT planning is necessary. Oversimplification of IT planning and a lack of clinician engagement have in the recent past led to poor return on investment (ROI) in HIT.
• Implementation requires not only strong project-management skills but also attention to end-user requirements and needs as well as to work processes re-engineering. Poor implementation has resulted in a large amount of work-process redundancy.