Opening keynote luncheon: “The impact of information technology on health care delivery”

Health care providers are facing unprecedented pressures to reduce the cost of care and improve the quality and safety of care. These pressures are expected to lead to significant changes in the structure of the industry and the means used to reimburse care providers. Information technology (IT) is seen as a critical contributor to efforts to transform health care delivery. Leveraging a foundation of broadly adopted electronic health records, IT will have four core impacts: — Enabli and improving health care processes — Delivering knowledge to care providers — Engaging patients — Enabling sophisticated analyses of treatment effectiveness and efficiency For IT to achieve its potential research and innovation will be required in several areas.