Changes in health care are at a breakneck pace. Regardless of the many changes we have collectively experienced, delivering health care has been, is, and will continue to be an enormously information-intensive process. Whether caring for a patient or a population, whether managing a clinic or a continuum, we are in a knowledge exchange business. A major task for our industry, and the task for chief information officers (CIOs), is to find and apply improved strategies and technologies for managing healthcare information. In a fiercely competitive healthcare marketplace, the pressures to suc ceed in this undertaking-and the rewards associated with success-are enormous. While the task is still daunting, we can all be encouraged by progress being made in information management. There are documented successes throughout health care, and there is growing recognition by healthcare chief executive officers and boards that information strategies, and their deployment, are essential to organizational efficiency, quite pos sibly organizational survival.

This book highlights innovative healthcare information technologies as they perform information integration throughout various health care settings. Contributors, representative of these settings, provide case studies citing active examples of technology systems at work, addressing critical success factors, documenting success in terms of improved quality and/or reduced cost. Each example will address the full range of issues associated with technological innovation in health care, from policy and clinical considerations, to business and operational issues.