Health care | From clipboards to keyboards | Economist.com

Health care | From clipboards to keyboards | Economist.com: "The health-care sector in North America spends surprisingly little on information technology (IT). The financial-services industry spends about $200 billion a year on high-tech kit; health providers spend just over a tenth of that amount (see chart). But John-David Lovelock of Gartner, a market-research firm, predicts that IT spending in health care will increase by an average of 4.7% per year between 2005 to 2010, the fastest growth-rate of any industry and well above the average of 3.7%. Technology firms sense the coming bonanza, judging by the mood at a gathering of health-care experts held in New York on May 15th and hosted by Jeffrey Immelt, the chairman of GE. Joseph Hogan, the head of GE's health-care division, declared that “technology will be at the heart of fixing the health-care crisis.” A spokesman for Siemens, a German rival, argued that the “explosion of medical knowledge” from the field of genomics means that information systems are no longer optional."