In 2010, hospitals in Western European countries spent roughly $3.2 billion on health IT products and services, according to a report by the European Coordination Committee of the Radiological, Electromedical and Healthcare IT Industry, FierceHealthIT reports.
Key Findings
The report by the not-for-profit trade association found that the types of tools that are used vary significantly between different countries (Bowman, FierceHealthIT, 1/17). For example, more than 80% of U.K. hospitals use computerized provider order entry systems, compared with almost none of Italy's hospitals.
In addition, the report broke down total hospital IT spending and found that:
- 37% went to administrative IT;
- 31% went to clinical IT;
- 21% went to radiology IT;
- 9% went to laboratory IT; and
- 2% went to cardiology IT.
The report also found that:
- The United Kingdom spent $221.3 million on health IT;
- Germany spent $189.6 million;
- France spent $158 million;
- Italy spent $56.9 million; and
- Spain spent $25.3 million (Gale, CMIO, 1/17).
Study Recommendations
The report's authors wrote, "More investment in clinical information is needed to move today's health care delivery models to the next level of efficiency and quality" (FierceHealthIT, 1/17).
The authors recommended that hospitals and governments continue to:
- Develop IT skills among health care professionals;
- Gather evidence on the benefits of health IT; and
- Invest in clinical IT systems to make health care delivery more efficient (CMIO, 1/17).