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 findings on 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.
Ari Bronsoler, Joseph Doyle and John Van Reenen
4 April 2022
Annual Review of Economics 14(1) , pp.23-46, 2022
DOI: 10.1146/annurev-economics-080921-101909
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-economics-080921-101909
This work is published under POID and the CEP's Growth programme.
This publication comes under the following CEP theme: Management practices and productivity, New technologies and productivity