Telehealth Monitor

As President Barack Obama prepared to meet with Congressional Democrats Tuesday to discuss healthcare reform, the White House Council of Economic Advisers released a report that highlights both the upside and the downside of technology.

On the plus side, healthcare IT could lead to high-value care by providing key information to providers rapidly. The the down side includes the overuse of diagnostic technology such as MRIs.

“For many types of medical conditions, a patient may have a choice of several methods or treatments, each having different benefits or risks,” the council noted. “Systematic examinations of the merits of different treatments and dissemination of the results of those examinations to patients and providers is one mechanism for promoting high-value care.  Health information technology may play an important role in increasing the rate at which new information broadly diffuses to providers and is incorporated into practice behavior.”

via White House report highlights ups and downs of healthcare technology | Healthcare IT News.