Health IT can help minimize disparities worldwide if public officials make technology more readily available, Hussein Gezairy, the World Health Organization director for the Eastern Mediterranean region, said at the World of Health IT conference in Vienna, Austria, on Wednesday, Healthcare IT News reports.
Gezairy said that WHO is coming to terms with using health care technology to boost health care outcomes throughout the world. Gezairy's region was the first WHO department to use information and communications technology to disclose how it spends public funding.
According to Healthcare IT News, the larger benefits of health care IT will be realized when technology is applied to public health initiatives. For example, Gezairy said that WHO on Monday agreed to develop a Web site to show the costs of pharmaceutical drugs in different countries.
Gezairy in his speech cited remaining challenges to health IT use, such as:
- Lack of national e-health policies, strategies, plans and legislative structures;
- Use of IT systems can be limited to nurses and clerks, rather than physicians;
- The costs of computer systems;
- Limited use of IT for public health;
- Populations concentrated in rural areas with restricted access to specialized care; and
- E-health projects, particularly telemedicine, that are initiated and controlled by nonhealth authorities.
Gezairy throughout his speech reiterated the need to include physicians in the planning and deployment phases of health IT (Beaudoin,
Healthcare IT News, 10/25).